Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Jr. interview

FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
This is an interview with Mr. Fred L. Shuttlesworth , Jr ., son of
Civil Rights leader and minister , Fred Shut tlesworth , Sr . This
interview was conducted on January 13 , 1989 , by Andrew M. Manis
and was conducted at the home of Mr. Shut t l esworth.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Mr. Shuttl esworth , can you give me some
essential background on yourself.
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH : I am a school t eacher at Cincinnati High . I
attended the University of Cincinnati . I have a Masters in
religion and a bachelor ' s in educati on. I am d i vorced and got a
son and two daughters. I have lived here since 1961 and I went
to Parker High School and Carver High School in Birmi ngham,
Alabama. I have been teaching now since about 1971 .
ANDREW M. MANIS: You were born in Selma?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I was born in Mobile .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Are there any stories about your birth that are
interesting? I mean I had one about mine and one about my
daughter's. What about , any stories
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: The things -- I don't remember my being born
or my sisters being born . The first things I remember were when
I was about three or four years old .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any stories that your parents
or your family tol d about the births of your sisters or yourself .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Pat was born in a situation -- when my folks
were marri ed they were a young poor couple . Right? MyoI d man
was driving a truck, preaching. My mother was going to school ,
1
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
what they called supply, studying to be a substitute. At the
point when we were born they weren't doing too well. The
earliest childhood memory I have is down in Montgomery. Ricky
and Pat and I were together -- Carol, I think, would have been
born about that time -- and the house caught on fire. Bad
memories. I guess we were staying at a place that wasn't so
nice, but you heard about it and it was just living -- I always
had many memories of that. Selma, we lived in Selma when myoId
man was going to seminary school and preaching. I remember that.
Like I say myoId man was the disciplinarian in the family. My
mother was the one who, you know, I think in most families -- I
remember getting in trouble. I had myoId man chase me out of
the house. He had to get his retribution right then. It seems
like he had more of it at the time. I think he chased me around
a city block.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember what you did?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Nothin'. No, it was like not living up to
your responsibilities. You're supposed to do this and you're
supposed to do that. If you don't, you get your butt kicked or
something. After you get it kicked, it ain't held over you, your
reputation ain't shot forever but it is before your peer group.
You get punished for what you do. I'm sure it had to do with
having a fight with my sisters or telling them something that
wasn't supposed to be told or just typical kid stuff. It was
just the fact that we got punished often and I guess this
2
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
particular day I wasn ' t in the mood for it and decided to take
off .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did your father have any particular rules that
you had to abide by?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Basically, I ' m a boy. I got three sisters .
You can ' t hit the girls. You can abuse them verbally and not too
bad at that but you can ' t hit them and you got to do your little
chores .
ANDREW M. MANIS: What were your chores?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Taking out trash, cleaning up , this and
that. Simple stuff. It was just a matter of everybody's trying
to run in a gang -- you don't want to do yours and you want her
to do part of yours and you want her to do yours and you do hers
tomorrow, that kind of stuff . Of course, I wasn ' t old enough to
manipulate anybody so it was just a matter of, is my stuff clean
or not at the proper time. Most of the time there would be a
hassle. But , you know , better you have to do it so you just go
on . We were kept in the house. Before the Civil Rights
movement , it wasn ' t just the Civil Rights movement that kept us
in the house . It was just the way we were . You could go in the
yard and you could go up the street "as far as, " and it wasn't
about doing things different than that. At one point I think we
were in Birmingham , I couldn ' t have been more than eleven or
twelve years old , but going to elementary school I had stayed
over at my aunt ' s house, my mother's aunt, on the West side of
3
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
town. I cut school for a day , sat out in the park and wat ched
the day go by , watched the peopl e go through the park, didn't do
anything with anybody else or anything. But I went home too
earl y . So my aunt looked at me real crazy and when my mother
and father got home I got my butt kicked. She took me home and I
got my butt kicked over there and got laughed at for about a
year. Everybody going back and forth about cutting class , you
shoulda , woulda , coulda. At l east you got the day off but you
paid for it. I was with a lot of folks where entertainment was
like goi ng back and forth with your people , joking and just
talking. Course I always read a l ot when I was a k i d . That's
what moved me into being an English teacher right now . I a l ways
enjoyed the time I spent just reading, sports and whatever . And
so , we had a close family connection with my mother's aunt who
lived in West End , Mrs . Morris , and her husband , and my cousin,
Julia Range and Ollie Range. That describes my memories right
there. My father's mother , out in Oxmoor , if it didn ' t happen in
Oxmoor and it didn't happen i n the West End , you know, or
Collegeville, that is where I was a kid, it probably didn 't
happen. It wasn't in focus for me . We were close . Just kids
with no responsibilities except to do your best to respect folks.
Not see i ng a who l e l ot because we didn't go no place. The games
and stuff. I d i dn 't start going to football games until I was in
junior high school and high. No later, but no earlier than
anybody else because it just wasn 't like us to go a whole lot of
4
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
places. We would just basically watch each other. From the
earliest time I can remember myoId man was gone , and it wasn't
the Civil Rights movement I remember in the community, things
happened, I 'm sure you've been down there. The churches -- well ,
at the park -- in that direction there ' s two or three
neighborhoods and in this direction was really our neighborhood.
We used to be up there always fighting where the railroad tracks
ran into Huntsville Road. This one guy had his throat cut and
all that. MyoId man gets in the car and I just happened to get
in with him . I didn ' t ask him and we just rode up. And for a
young person to get out of the car and see your old man telling
people what to do , consoling the boy's family and talking to them
about , you know, life and death at the same time . You are
talking about day to day stuff. You go to church and this and
that. Do you do so and so. Where you work at? Man sittin '
there bleedin ' right? People are upset. Somebody wants to
fight. Somebody wants to do this and that . This guy has
leadership potential, you know. It was not a negative thing ; it
was just a given. The minister has the power in these Black
communities. I understood that before I understood exactly what
else he did . I had seen on so many occasions when somebody
comes to him and asks him in a polite way or a forceful way,
whatever, and there wasn ' t nothing controversial about it. It
was just a given , that this guy had a lot of authority and
influence from somewhere and so it took him away with what he was
5
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
with us. He had a real good sense of humor. He was always joking
and stuff and relating the latest stories about who did what .
The churches was a montage of people who were unique characters,
we had the [undistinguishable] types, including us, and so
preachers kids had to go through their line. You know folks
always got their comments about the good and bad. We had special
folks in the community who would try to make things comfortable
for us.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Can you remember who they were or some specific
things they did to help you?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: It basically had to do with the fact that
you've got to go to church three times every Sunday. So the time
in between you would like to have a nice time. They would take
us over to their houses, Mrs. Donald, like I said, my cousin,
Julia, Mrs. Billups, Mrs. Funderburke, a bunch of ladies, Mrs.
Clark. Mrs. Clark lost her husband when I was around eleven or
twelve years. She never got married even to this day .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Lucille Clark?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Right, you met her. Let ' s see, her family,
Mrs. Chappel, a lady who was her cousin I think . Chappels and
Clarks were probably as close to my family as other parts of my
family members. Its just church thing. You know some folks you
worship with because you share the same religion and some you
worship with because you love them. These were like our real
family people and we weren't with them all the time but they were
6
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
always there. There was Mr. Revis, right next door, Mr.
Robinson, all these just good nice folks, hard-working
individuals. Ain't nobody trying to do nothing slick.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any particular things they did
to minister to your family.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, we were always either by ourselves or
having to go through some special circumstance. You know, extra
guests coming in and they would take the slack. They would cook
and bring it over. We got some free time or something happening
at the church and we didn't necessarily want to be there. Let
the kids come over here and play with her nieces and nephews.
Everybody got nieces and nephews. When they would do something
with their kids, they would take us along or whatever. It was
just a thing. These folks were like, . specific stuff, where
they would take up slack for him but that didn't come up until
later with the Civil Rights Movement, when Mr. Revis renovated
his house front and back and all these folks gave up all their
time. Back then, being a minister's family, folks are always
looking to do things for you. It was almost a commonplace or a
given, you know. Most of the stuff that went on in my family, I
must admit, I was not aware of it until I got older or was told
of it. But, whenever anything had to be done in the house, or
around the house, in the community, somehow or another it just
went through our household. The church was there, and the
parsonage was right next to it. School couldn't have been but
7
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
one, two , three, four blocks away. We had a closed society and
even in that little foursquare block , I didn ' t get to see all of
it. I only got to see certain parts . Basically it had to do
with these folks taking us into their houses and just letting us
be entertained by their families or to give my mother some slack
or to kill the time between church services . We always
worshipped with the same people and then once the movement got
going it was about just taking off some of the pressure , you
know , trying to have a good time , laughing and joking about the
situation rather than getting all tense and up tight about it.
But in certain instances , I was just a little bit too young .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Sure.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: To really know who was pulling all these
strings.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about your grandparents? On both , well ,
your mother's side?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't have grandparents on my mother ' s
side. Mr. and Mrs. Morris were her devoted grandparents to me.
When they had the march on Washington we all went to her house. I
remember that. When Daddy tried to integrate Phillips [High
School] and whatever that was where he got chained, and my mother
stabbed , her husband had taken me over to Julia ' s house and we
went to school from Ju l ia ' s house. He ' d pick us up at Julia ' s
and drive us back home. This was a guy who was really , he was
dressed like an entertainer , a preacher or an entertainer , in a
8
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Black community would be dressed. He worked for the railroad but
he also had an interest in a funeral home. He had one of these
cars for the family. Right? With seats set up in the middle.
And this was the thing -- our family was over to his house -- we
showed up there to keep the car clean so it would look good. He
would drive us back and forth . He was a spectacularly nice guy.
As a couple, they would go like through years at a time the only
disagreement they might have would be about what they were going
to have for dinner. The trouble he might come raising his voice
when he might say "Gosh , Blanks , Dale - her name was Adele." He
wouldn ' t say it like most folks, he would say, "Gosh, blanks,
Dale, do you have to turn t he TV up so loud? Do you have to fix
the steaks this way?" Nothing this guy did was too much of a
demand to be normal . He got home at 3:30. This was a classic
Ozzie and Harriet situation. They didn't have no kids . My
mother, who she always thought was a spoiled brat , brings her
kids over. She ' d be glad to give you the All American raising and
let you see how he treats her. You know, have his supper ready
when he gets home and have the house clean and just , you know,
get along. It was never to her anything but straight ahead
together .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did they get along with your father?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Evidently they got along fine with him. That
was unusual to me because myoId man didn't get along with
everybody all the time . But these were older people I am sure
9
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
when he was courtin ' my mother . He had to go through them and
so, yeah, they got along great. My aunt, now, she is a very
quiet demure person. If she had a criticism she would make it
softl y and off to the side and if you didn 't agree , just go
ahead . My uncle, on the other hand, whatever you did was fine
with him. He had Colonel Johnson , I am sure you have interviewed
him or talked to him.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Not yet .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : Strong Johnson. He worked on the railroad
and he was one of the strongest supporters myoId man had in the
Civil Ri ghts movement . He was his body guard . He'd watch the
house outsi de. Carl Johnson . And I am sure you know who I am
tal king about . They called him Buck Johnson . Buck was a real
good friend of Uncle Josh. Augustus Ulas William ?? Morris ,
licensed as A. U. Morris , and his wife's name was Adele and they
made the perfect classic couple. To have a car and to have a
nice little house, decent part of the city. This was our idyllic
i n Birmingham. There were many blighted parts of the city . But
theirs was a nice part. From what I understand he and Buck
worked together. However it came about , he and Buck together, he
came to know myoI d man through my Uncle Josh . I am sure it was
his wife and children . And so all this time support that he was
getting , financial, moral support or whatever. This is what my
Unc l e Josh was responsible for. But back at that time I had no
idea then. Unc l e Josh came home and played with us , do whatever.
10
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
He split. I never saw him and myoId man sit down and talkin'
about this situation. It just never occurred to me but the older
I got I realized that if it hadn't been for Uncle Josh, myoId
man would not even have known Buck. I don't know but that is the
way it looked to me. I used to see Buck come over to Uncle
Josh's house fixing things and doing this and that for auntie,
way before daddy was deep in all this Civil Rights stuff. So I
had to assume that that friendship held onto this other real
strong support. That's just one example. Everything is like net
worth in some way or another. It might not be formal but it is
certainly informal.
ANDREW M. MANIS: How do you think your mother's aunt and uncle,
these people whom you have been talking about, how do you think
they influenced your mother? They reared her.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: As far as I know they raised her. The family
was very small and she went to school to get a strong sense of
herself, pride, dignity and all this. Where we lived, the
ghetto, it wasn't beneath her. She was constantly trying to
brighten it up. You understand what I am saying. Just like this
matriarch of the family in the Black community. I used to think
it was overdone but actually it is not. We just don't give
enough credit to the meaning. We spend so much time throwing
blame we hardly ever give credit. She was just another Black
lady trying to make it. But definitely the fact that myoId man
came from Oxmoor and the fact that she was from the West side of
11
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
town whe r e folks had a little bit better
ANDREW M. MANIS: Are you talking about your mother or your
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: My aunt ' s father and my aunt and uncle , I had
no idea where he came up. As far as I was concerned he was born ,
raised and died at 824 Washington Avenue. You know Birmingham is
a block over from Wylam.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I just wasn ' t clear whether you were talking
about Aunt Adele or your mother just then , when you were talking
about trying to brighten up your home or
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH : Mrs, Morris , all her interest seemed to be
right in the house extended to sending us to church, taking us to
Sunday School, and so forth , and keeping her family going. My
mother seemed to be able to see a little bit further than that.
She had a littl e bit more education , a little bit more
assertiveness , a l i ttle bit more outspoken, a lot more outspoken ,
and so what auntie would not like something and keep it to
herself for a long time. Might make a little comment, but my
mother woul d say it right there , not in a nasty way but, you
know, straight up , honestly and go on. And if it carne up again
she ' d say it again . And so oftentimes she would criticize her
for being outspoken , she'd criticize her for wanting to work in
real nice stuff. But what is the point of not wearing nice stuff
is what I used to always wonder . When her husband would dress
real sharp and she is not giving any thought about dressing at
all. It never bothered her. When she got ready to go to church,
12
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
she'd dress too, but she didn't go as much as he did, so it was
one of those things. How do you dress signifies something? Like
I said, in the Black community, seeing myoId man's suit, seeing
my uncle in his suit and tie going to a job, that kind of
influenced me to say, "Hey, the signs have to be there in order
for you to get your influence or whatever." In the Black
community more than others, it seems like that means more than it
really should sometimes. You know. [Indistinguishable.} My
mother got a lot of criticism from her for wanting us to have
this and that, maybe something we did not necessarily need. But
you know, when you're raising kids you always have the second
generation say you shouldn't give them quite so much but in times
of love and affection they gave us 200%.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about your father's mother.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: We would get a month at grandmother's every
year and we would get a month at auntie's every year and in
between we would have weekends or days, or whatever, wherever we
needed to be.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me ask you this. How do you think your
grandmother influenced your father? In what ways was your father
influenced by his mother?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I'm sure she introduced him to the spiritual
side of his mentality. He wouldn't have it if it hadn't been for
her. He gives her credit for that. But at the same time, before
you saw her in the spiritual sense, you saw her in a very strong
13
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
physical sense. She was a very strong woman. I am sure you know
now she is sick and holding on and this and that. The average
person would have passed fifteen years ago with all the stuff
she's got. She has this nature, she has this spirit that is
just, the word is indomitable, I guess. She is going to get her
point across and she is going to do this and she is going to do
that. I know this much about my grandmother. I know that, and I
can get in her, her aura seems to go around the whole area of her
house. You know the things you get close to, you look and see
what has she done, like there was the matriarchal system and it
is the finest, best, worst, whatever. She had a husband, Mr.
Jesse, her third husband I believe. He was just like a part of
backdrop for her. Not that she was being oppressive, not that
she was being anything, just being herself which was assertive
and over at her house she did the butt kicking. And Mr. Jesse
might make a comment and go ahead on. He was a real meek guy,
who talked soft and this and that and any day of the week, any
time, you might see her with a baby in one hand and a switch in
the other, whippin' somebody's butt, talking about this and that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: This Mr. Jesse you mentioned, is not your
father's stepfather.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No, I never knew my father's side. I can't
say anything about that. I don't know who was who. But he was
in the house with us. I remember whenever I used to go over
there Mr. Jesse was there. His stepfather might have been the
14
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1(13(89
second husband . I don ' t know. I never asked anybody . My
memories of grandmother were that Mr. Jesse was with her. He
might be able to tell you what relation he has with him. But ,
like I say, he was just there, you know, nice guy. He likes me
and al l that but my grandmother's crazy about me , as she is about
the other fifteen or twenty that she ' s got running around. But
that does not mean that on the slightest drop of the hat , you'd
crack the wrong line she ' d wouldn't smack you up between two or
three trees on your back . MyoId man don't kick butts no better
than she do .
ANDREW M. MANIS : So she ' s
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: She is a strong country woman.
ANDREW M. MANIS: So she was very much disciplinarian?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : And outspoken. Not necessarily contentious .
She just moved too many battles.
ANDREW M. MANIS: No doubt your father took after his mother.
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Exactly! So the way I have ever had to
pursue his father in terms of asking about him, I just listen to
what he says. This is his influence . He looks like her , he
talks like her. He has all of her mannerisms. Like I said , he
has a diffent worldview than she has simply because of his
experiences outside. If a Black woman could have done anything in
life, his mamma could have done anything in life had she gotten
out of Oxmoor on that hill . The strength that she used to do
what she did was awesome . It really was.
15
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: I'm certain to ask your father this directly
but 1 111 ask you since I am thinking about it. What is your
father ' s view of the role of woman, the equality of women to men?
Is he a traditionalist with regard to male- female roles?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Traditionalist I guess is a good enough term.
In the church you got to deal with the scriptures that talk about
that. In day to day living he wants his wife to be, you know, in
the house. My mother wanted to work. He wants, you know, the
classic Ozzie and Harriet thing and when you get down to it, it
was true. I was married and I wanted my wife to work because we
needed the money. Right? They did too , but he wouldn't admit
it. So, you know, if you are not a traditionalist , or if you are
a traditionalist , you are asking for problems, you know that .
The fact that she was kind of, she liked to dress well, this and
that , all that did not necessarily help his relationship with
her. It is kind of obvious he is a real traditionalist.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Are there any stories, just sort of a treasury
of stories that you remember hearing family members tell about
your father when he was a boy?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : Well, when his family gets together he is
just one among ten . You know, they were always aware of what he
is doing. Most of the stuff that relates to him, that he has
told me and that I have heard, relates to groups of him and Uncle
Gene . From what I understand they used to run together . Uncle
Clifton was the baby under them. So just like Pat and Ricky
16
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
would take advantage of me, he and Uncle Gene would take
advantage of Clifton. When it came up to going out with girls,
when it came to getting money from the parents, whatever. This
was the pecking order. Evidently it has not changed. Even in
their old age when they make a joke, the joke is about him. When
they make a joke and laugh it is almost like clockwork. But they
got a sister named Cleo who is either between daddy and Uncle
Gene or whatever . She has a very strong forceful personality
too. She has not moved off of that hill in Oxmoor next to her
mother.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I know, I talked with her two weeks ago.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: r im saying and I am sure you could see some
of this where, you know, had I had been on the hill I could have
done that. Or I don ' t know what that thing is with that family,
but like I say , there was a bunch of them. Most of the stories
have to do with how they went down here and got in this kind of
trouble and lied on this one and get out. You know, the same kind
of stuff. But I couldn't relate to them because I didn't know the
characters they were using. But the pecking order was him and
Uncle Gene ran and Uncle Clifton. All of his brothers and
sisters were not blood, you know, full blooded. And so there
ain't too much happening in terms of good relationships with
these sisters here and this one sister, I could see more there.
Once again, I have been to all their houses. I know all their
kids in a superficial way from a distance. Close up, there is
17
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
just not a strong continuous thing . When we were over at
grandma ' s house , what I am trying to say to you , for that two
weeks, different folks ' kids might be there. He's got nine
brothers and sisters and we might be over there with Uncle Gene's
kids were there one year. The next year we might be over there
with Aunt Shane ' s kids from out of town . The ones who were
constantly there were Robert Lee and his sisters. Frankly
speaking , I have no idea how they were related to them at all.
But I know they were related because they were re l ated to
grandma. So , I know them better than I know some of my own
cousins . It wasn ' t about daddy , it was about grandma and who ' s
talking to who . Her kids were always -- one of them would try to
live there and then go back to mamma ' s house . There was always
about this sad , I don't want to say soap operas. Course it was
always about their personal lives between the folks in the family
right there a t that moment. I never heard nobody talking in
Oxmoor talking about the Civil Rights movement. I never heard
nobody in the West End talk about anything but compliments from
myoId man. By the same token , these are upper middle class
folks here. Country folks here . And country folks are mainly
concerned with what they are living with day to day. They read
the paper and watch TV but once again what ' s happening wi th us i s
more important, and we can't influence that no way. That seems
to be a part of what he has to deal with when he goes there. He
is not ah -- I am sure that is one of the few places he can
18
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
relax . He ain't got to be the minister and this and that. You
know, he's Fred who became a minister and that makes a lot of
difference in terms of letting your hair down or whatever .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I ' ll ask you again. Can you remember any
stories that they tell about your father?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Not really. Him working on these jobs, they
tease him about how hard he had to scuffle to get together with
my mother . That ' s the deal. You ' re out here in the country.
She was a little ole low class girl . You are trying to get this
little low class girl. That ' s where the teasing came from. Like
they used to run with him and my uncle chose a girl from in the
city and my Uncle Clifton chose a lady from in the city. All of
them did. Nobody married country girls, but they tease each
other about the girl they chose and the way they went about it.
Like I said, these are funky stories. It doesn't bear repeating
except about how you were embarrassed and do so and so and that
kind of stuff. They didn ' t tell stories just about him. They
told them about the whole group and how they reacted to things
that happened. Like I said, when I am down there I just in a
crowd and grandma is the spoke in the middle of the wheel and
everybody else just goes out. It is a totally different world
than anyplace else .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any stories your grandmother or
your father told about her disciplining your father?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Grandmamma was legendary in terms of her
19
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
discipline . She had these serious "Go get me a stick. and rack
lem up" or the ironing cord , and this and that . See, he ' s tough.
He don't want to cry when he gets whipped, so he ' d get whipped
extra. The rest of us didn't have no qualms with that . We would
put out the tears as soon as it got started . But he wanted to be
tough and grandma had to really work on him because over a period
of time a boy don ' t want no lady telling him what to do . It's as
simple as that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Tell me a little bit more about your mother.
Were there any ways that you think that she influenced your
father?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, when it was time to come up here to
Cincinnati in 1961 and go on to the end he sat her down in a
chair. This had been going on for quite some time I am sure but
this day it was presented to us. That there was an opportunity
in Cincinnati to live. How do you feel about it? He was always
somebody who wanted to stay in Birmingham. And I am sure had
there been any part of her that wanted to stay in Birmingham at
that time , the whole family would have stayed. Like I said , she
got us up here. I am sure that is the reason we are a live today.
I am sure that in retrospect he knows that is what he needed to
do at that time . Three kids going to college . You ain1t making
enough money to send one down there . If you come up here you
could get some help and you could look at it more realistically
because , like the money situation down there was stupid . It had
20
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
to be done economically. It had to be done psychologically. On
reflection, like I said, it was a meat grinder for everybody's
mentality, every day this pressure of this and that. We couldn't
have lived down there very much longer I am sure. Yet, he didn't
necessarily want to do it.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did she think that moving to Cincinnati would
gradually get Fred out of Civil Rights?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That had not been proved at that point. SCLC
has been an umbrella of an organization means that the regular
terms just don't apply. If you are in SCLC and you're a board
member you go where SCLC goes, no matter where you live.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I just wonder if she felt that by being out of
Birmingham he would gradually disengage from the active •
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't know how she could have expected that
because .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was it primarily financial and getting out of
the pressure of Birmingham made her want to come to Cincinnati?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Specifically, one girl is going to be a
sophomore, one girl is going to be a freshman in college and I am
a high school senior. It's hard to just say it was specifically
economic or specifically this because, like I say, preachers move
all the time. And so, had he gotten another church, that he had
seen as he was evangelizing or whatever, it was kind of,
obviously, it was dangerous. It was kind of -- well, this was a
couple years before the march, but once again, his contribution
21
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1 / 13/89
had been good planning to everybody who was there and her thing
was simply you' l l be sharing the load with somebody else sure l y
even if you can ' t give it up and his thing was "Well , I am going
to do whatever I got to do." That just does not allow for good
feelings . For when you say , "1 am going to do whatever I got to
do ," you are basical ly saying "the hell with what you say. "
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, how do you think he fina l ly came around
and became convinced that it was acceptable to come to
Cincinnati?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Other people had been doing the same thing .
The other p l aces, the people he had been dealing with, they were
moving. King started out in Montgomery and went to Atlanta. I
know he was born there and a l l that, but still this is the way it
goes. You might get big here but you come back home and do this
and that. So really, he was the only one who hadn ' t gone
somewhere and come back. By the time we moved, I 'm sure, his
constituents on that l evel , I 'm not talking about King , I am
talking about C. K. Steele, who went to New York , this one guy
went to Florida . They had all started moving to different
places. The only ones who did not from where I can see with just
my own experience, were ones who were in the upper echelons of
SCLC or the same as King who was born there and he just went back
home. There were a l ot of people I am sure who have left there
now who moved up here about thi s time. In the second place his
brother moved up here before he did . Uncle Gene was up here
22
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
worki ng and teaching and this and that . My mother was a teacher.
It was easy to make the move then whereas it wouldn't have been
before . Uncle Gene might have influenced him as much as my
mamma. Or the three of them collectively . Uncle Gene ' s wife was
about like auntie . Very supportive , very quiet, and yet she
worked . She just retired from teaching. She had a full career
and t h i s and that. You don ' t have to be assertive, as a woman to
make a mark. But you do have to be vocal. She was a very quiet
person. You never would know what she thought until you asked
her a specific question. On the other hand , Uncle Gene, daddy
and my mother were vocal people. Trying to discuss things with
each other . Not tha t i t was our decision at all but when you add
all that up the wonder is why he hadn ' t done it before. He
never said " I have been bombed twice, the threats were always
there. " My sisters and I had that thing up in Gadsden , Alabama .
ANDREW M. MANIS : Yeah , I am going to ask you about that l ater .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: There were so many instances . The
handwriting was on the wall in a mural type dictation. Just no
way around it, it was time to go. To my knowledge, the day we
got to the table , that was the first I hear d of that , and the
next thing I know , Ollie was driving us up to see Cincinnati .
There was my mother in the house, myoId man stil l down there
going back and forth. New life . Cincinnati , as cold as hell in
the mi ddle of summer . Those are my first memories of here . Like
23
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/ 13/89
I say, one day we were there and the next day we were here . When
you look back, there was no way we could have stayed there. The
church where he was, was very supportive of him. But you just
can't sustain effort over a l ong period of time without burning
out. And I'm sure his personal thing was, you know you can only
dip into the well so many times. I just didn't see him the same
way then that I see him now. I didn ' t see him as often or as
clearly .
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did you see him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: As a preacher. Now he is a man and a
preacher. Back then he was just a preacher because when folks
related to me it was about how's the preacher. It wasn ' t how is
your daddy. It was about how ' s the preacher. That's all right,
you know how it is, it saves you from having to think a lot of
times . Just go with the flow of what you know they're gonna
think . His thing with me was always like he's there and he ' s got
the power to do this and that and the question i s how is he going
to do it . But he ' s always going to do it. He is a lways going to
say what he is supposed to say. He ' s a lways going to back you
up. He is a lways going to let you know you ' re wrong , too. Once
I got hurt and I had to go to the hospital . He had told me and
Ricky to stay in the house the same as he always told us every
day to stay in the house. So we was on the fringes of the time.
We were definitely in the wrong place. Because we could see that
blue car which he had at that time coming so we were rushing back
24
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
to the house I cracked my head wide open on a brick on a thing .
I go to the hosp i tal and he comes to visit me and he tells me ,
"I'm glad to see you are all right , but as soon as you get out of
here I am going to kick your butt because you were in the wrong
place at the wrong time . " In the very next voice he would tell
me , "now are you sure you don't want some ice cream?" or
somethi ng like that . Thi s cat was always going to let you know,
"1 1m doing my job . I am looking to see right and wrong in you . "
The question is how are you going to react to that. It is not
about what he is going to do. But I was just shocked that he
tempered me . But with this other thing about concern " I 'm gonna
buy you some ice c r eam, too" -- he also let me know I had
something coming for being in the wrong place.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Was he the kind of father who outwardly
demonstrated affection to his children?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , like I say, there is only so much that
can go a r ound. There are four of us in the house . He ain ' t got
time to be affecti onat e with a l l four of t hese kids . He didn ' t
have time to play romper room . This brother would be doing this,
that , and the other. You know, he ld come and pat you on the head
every once in a while or hug or kiss you or whatever but mostly
it was about getting your butt kicked . You might get petted and
this and that , but be quiet and let him sleep. Everything had to
revolve around him because , like I said , for a lot of different
reasons , he had to be the focus on a lot of folks ' attention.
25
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1(13(89
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you find he was different from other
fathers that you observed?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: A l ot of fathers were , probabl y a lot of
fathers weren 't there.
ANDREW M. MANIS: The ones who were?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : The ones who were there he was more outspoken
than some of them but he didn't have no monopol y on any of those
characteristics in the homes I went into. Like I say, Uncle Josh
was the undisputed leader of his household no matter who was in
it at any time without being loud but certainly it was very
obvious. In grandma ' s house there was a central thing of
authority . So , no , it wasn ' t no different at our house as
anybody elses . It was j ust a preacher ' s house and when folks came
in there was always , you know, the complimentary fashion. Nobody
came to our house to start trouble at any point. The men, there
were very few men around there who didn ' t try to have total
control of their homes . Those who did not I wouldn ' t have been
aware of them .
ANDREW M. MANIS: In terms of how these fathers and your father
related to their chil dren
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , Mr . Revis, right next door, the guy who
gave up his house, he ran a cleaners out in back and he worked at
U. S . Pipe , hard work, doing this stuff . He had his sons, he
tried to drive his sons to do exactly what he did . He drove them
away. Their old man was a driver too. But, like I say at that
26
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
poi nt in time I was so young , I wasn ' t going no where no way. It
was just a matter of maintaining what I had -- so I missed a lot
of the authority that Pat and Ri cky would have had to deal with.
No "Can I?" "No! " No d i scussion, no this, no that. "Will we?"
"No! " I didn 't get too much of that because I wasn 't requiring
that much at that time. But he was not atypical among the men
that I knew. Mr . Robinson, James Robinson, the fellow you heard
on the program, the last one that when they named the street [for
Shuttlesworth], who had large program, this guy that spoke, his
father was basi cally the same way . You try as much as you can to
make a young black boy aware that he is going to have a row to
hoe out here . And the only way he can do it is to be real
strong. I don 't know if it was a blessing or a curse. I saw his
other brothers who were just two or three years older than I am
and going through a l l this hell. I wasn ' t going through
nothing . I was just old enough to be aware. You see , I skipped
over a couple of grades in school so I went to school the first
two years of my, I was around people who I could understand you
could just see stuff and just mark it down and go ahead. I could
see these young men struggling to be independent . But I didn ' t
have no need for independence. It was always about just what I
am going to do. It was dull as hell, I ' ll give you that . It
gives you time to learn things vicariously . Where you ain ' t got
to beat your head against that wall to figure out that that wall
is strong. You saw somebody else beat their head against the
27
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
wall. Like I say, naivete was basically my characteristic
through this whole
ANDREW M. MANIS: Tell me about your experience of being the
preacher's kid or one of the preacher's kids.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, the low point, kids were allowed to
play ball in between old houses. When you play among the
fellows, you get a chance to be a man. Well it was nothing
unusual to go somewhere and have folks know you and you don't
know who they are. This was that kind of situation. We had been
playing ball a block over from where I lived, playing football
and we were cursing up a storm basically. "The hell with you"
and this and that. Every opportunity where you could put a curse
word between, we are going to do that. I was loud at this time
with a whole bunch of other guys. But when the older people
finally got tired of this, nobody's name came up but mine.
Because I was the one everybody knew. Two of them brothers lived
on the street. Nobody said nothin ' about them. It was all about
me and my nasty mouth. Needless to say it was one of those
opportunities to demonstrate to the people that his son wasn't no
different than nobody else's and, Yeah, I heard about it, and
this and that and this and that and he had to pay the price for
this . But you get used to that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did he do?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: He talked about it from the pulpit. He
thanked the lady. He kicked my butt. He kept me in the house for
28
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
a week. By this point, except for the fact that I really didn't
think or consider that these folks knew who I was, I was just
totally free to do my stuff, my little low life, low class self
with my friends. I didn't have the opportunity.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me ask you this. Your father is capable of
expressing himself vividly and with a profane word here and
there. What were the limits here?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: You mean in terms with language for young
kids?
ANDREW M. MANIS: Yeah!
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well he wasn't like Atticus in "To Kill a
Mockingbird" when Scout said "Pass the damn ham." If I had done
that, myoId man would have reached across the table and went
like that [a slap]. Everybody knows what you can and cannot say.
Nothing around grown people. So if you want to take the liberty
to do that be prepared to pay the full consequences. Now the
kids in the area, my sisters' boyfriends would come over and out
in front of the house they would be macho. It ain't nothing for
him to holler out, "That's enough." Occasionally they would make
a remark and leave but they always left. Not myoId man, but
just anybody. It was almost kind of dictative. All your life
you were taught how to respect grown people, how to respect
women. You knew if you had anything unusual you were going to
have to suffer for it.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, I guess that gets back to the question I
29
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
asked earlier about what were some of the basic, if you could
just list a handful of some of the basic rules that your parents
put on all of you.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: You got to be responsible for doing your
thing. If you help somebody else do their thing and don't get
yours done , it's on you. It isn't on them, it's on you. You got
to work hard in school. If you ain't as bright as this person,
that's nice. It's always about whose the brightest. It turns
out the baby was the brightest of all of us. But nobody knew it
at the time. At one point they thought I was the brightest. But
I was getting skipped over school. When we was in Birmingham I
was the brightest but when we came over here I lost about twenty
I.Q. points because Carol became so much brighter as time went
on. But that is not the issue. The issue was do your best. The
issue then was if you are not doing your best you were cheating
yourself and wasting everybody ' s -- you know that commercial lithe
mind is a terrible thing to waste" -- this was exemplified as
opposed to sit down at the table like the Cosby folks do and just
say "1'11 kick your so and so if you bring another one of them in
here." That is telling me in so many words you must work hard in
school. It wasn't like Huxtables. It was more like when you
didn't live up to what you were to live up to, all hell broke
loose. It might be your mother swinging on you. It might be
your father but whoever, you got the message. Some things you
could slack. If I did something and it wasn't serious he
30
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1(13(89
wouldn ' t even hear about that. My mother wouldn ' t pass that on.
Whatever it was , he went off. If it was good, he would go off
profusely. Praised you like you just cure cancer. On the hand ,
if you did something minute , you got your butt kicked because he
is such an up tight person . Wound up. But that don ' t mean he
wasn't relaxing because I saw him relax often. He was just a
happy go l ucky brother. He ' s losing that. He ' s tired now . That
is one of the t hings he had to sacrifice .
ANDREW M. MANIS : What did he do to relax?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Sit around the house and joke. Reverend Lane
would come over to the house and play checkers . In the house. I
don ' t know what he did outside. But, in the house , just having
folks over . Carrying on a conversation . He and my mother never
drank or smoked so it wasn ' t about partyi ng and things like that.
But people were always coming by . It wasn ' t nothi n ' for him to
entertain everybody with stories about when he was a young
preacher , how he learned how to handle situations. Held call me,
"June, come out here and tell them how you so and so and so ."
He and my mother didn 't think nothin ' about -- like a church
program . When you call somebody up, "be ye also ready. Come here
and tell these folks what you know about so and so. Come here ,
Jim, this is my boy."
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any of those specifically, when
he asked you do somethi ng?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: What have you been doing in school lately?
31
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Come over here and cite your averages. Show you know this
particular bit of thing that we discussed. I was well read so I
could give points -- I was always good on sports. He liked
sports but he couldn ' t follow them as well as I could , even at
that point in time. It would be about "This little boy , he is
going to be so and so and 50 •• 1 All I had to do was sit there and
bask in this and go right on . But everybody gives you that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you enjoy -- this gets back to the issue of
being a preacher's son -- preacher's kid -- did you enjoy going
to church?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No , I didn 1t enjoy it all but it was
unavoidable.
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did you deal with that?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That was a situation , the situation you asked
about the values , I got away from that. The values that you
always do this and that . One value is that when it is time to do
a certain thing , whatever the circumstances are, you just go
ahead and do that. It is always about you living up to your
responsibilities. If it is time to go to church and you ain't
got your thing ready, you just ain ' t ready. There is another
situation where I left my shoes at school . All I had in the
house were gym shoes . Sunday morning , I said, "Hey , I can ' t go
to church in those gym shoes ." That is what I told my sister .
The word got to my mamma . She says , "Now , you know you 're not
preaching, you ' re just sittin up there and so and so and so and
32
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
so." I said "Oh, my dear, I just, I just, I just." Finally he
hears about it. (Emulates crying). I'm sitting there crying but
I got my gym shoes on and I am in church.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Before you get
on, what did he do?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: He said, "If you don ' t get your ass up there
I going to slap the shit out of you." That I s what he said. NOw,
had I wanted, I could have just waited and carne in and did that.
That's your option, you can sit there and take the punishment and
do what he tells you to do or you can just go on and do it. It
wasn't about like on TV where the kids "Well, so and so, no."
You either took that butt kicking or you went on and did what you
had to do anyway.
ANDREW M. MANIS:
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH:
It doesn't matter how strongly you felt.
Did you ever cut up in church?
I ' d cut up if there were no adults around.
Any adult would be enough of an authority figure to tell me to
shut up in church. And when he got in the pulpit, the thing was,
everybody , adults and kids, had to listen to what he says. It
wasn't no big deal to listen to what he said in the church
environment. But at horne it was like life and death, man. You
might seriously consider whether or not you were going to make it
through the next confrontation you had with the belt or whatever
it was. To illustrate it, it didn't corne up to me too clearly
then, but at the time all I could see was, if I'm not prepared do
my little lecture and I don't have this little bit, I better do
33
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
the hell out of this because my job i s to be there and I want to
present myself in this fashion. When you got folks looking for
you , you got to show up. Another situation, he showed us where
his responsibility was to get everybody together . In that
cont ext, me and Ricky and Pat and Carol had to get in line like
everybody else. We had a bus trip going somewhere. There was
like six seats available for seven people . The issue was who's
gonna ride and who ' s not gonna ride? Who's gonna go later , who ' s
gonna go now? He takes us out and put somebody else on to
demonstrate , nOh, don't worry about so and so. " My mother got
very upset at that." And so, it ' s nice to make a point. But
lets not make a poi nt every time all the time this time . I got
the message right away there. It just showed how oftentimes his
purposes were at cross purposes with hers.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was that sort of thing something that he did
often and that often created
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, it didn ' t come up that often. That the
way we had to expect it to go. It was a point of pride to him,
like in every preacher ' s kid ' s mentality you know you're going to
be the butt of a joke, so accept it gracefully, then you can get
through it. If you're gonna take it hard it will be hard. And I
am the kind of person all my life just go with the flow. While
you didn't like it, once you got there , you go with the flow and
have a nice time , the folks are there to help you . They're real
nice folks. Not the most exciting thi ng in the world but, once
34
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
again, this is it. He showed us that when you are working at this
level you do have to -- or what I learned was not necessarily
what he wanted to show me. What he showed me was that "you just
don't count" purpose. What he showed me was I got a family and
got another consideration and I just make sure I dealt with both
at the same time. Oftentimes he just didn't have time for that.
Somebody else was doing the knitty gritty nuts and bolts
operation. He just did the overall thing so really he didn't
have control of that particular thing but he could say "Let's
just take two older kids -- let's take my kids." That shows the
mentality you always have .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Were there any regular family rituals or
traditions that you all did maybe once a week, or once a month,
or was there any particular way you celebrated Christmas?
Anything that was regular like that?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Nothing out of the ordinary. Like I say,
church was always first and foremost. Almost everything we did
was regulated by what was happening in the church until the
summer time when it was about what's happening at grandma ' s house
or what's happening at auntie's house. There was a different
kind of atmosphere for us.
ANDREW M. MANIS: So you just went and lived with your grandma
for a month?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Two or three weeks or a month out of the
summer. Or any weekend that was necessary.
35
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did your parents do?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: God only knows. Maybe travel.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Like a vacation?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, yeah.
ANDREW M. MANIS: All four of you would go at the same time?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Ricky and I were comfortable everywhere.
Pat's not comfortable in Oxmoor. Pat's not comfortable in West
End either, that's on account of Julia's house. Julia lost a
daughter Pat's age. They had this little bond between them.
That's always where Pat wants to be. Carol was so young she
didn't really care. Me and Ricky went anyplace to be
comfortable, but, you know, we had a different kind of atmosphere
here and here and here. But, you know, go with the flow or
standing there and dealing with it every second through is always
the choice of people gotta make.
ANDREW M. MANIS: When did it become clear to you that your
father was unusual among Black ministers?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Among ministers, much later. I gave every
minister the attributes I gave him for the longest time. I
assumed all ministers got out in the streets with their people.
I assumed that all ministers would stop what he is doing here to
deal with this issue here. This is an important issue. I
thought all ministers dealt with the socio-economic side of their
peoples' lives as opposed to just to spiritual. Then I found out
that wasn't true and after, let me see, the time -- I guess that
36
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
would be here in Cincinnati. Down there it was my experience that
all these ministers was coming to do all this stuff together.
Now, I didn't see the ministers who were not there. I would see
the criticism in the newspapers, the Black newspapers about what
some of the ministers said. All I could see was a straight up
"We got to do this," "Let's get together, let's do this, let's
get this done I let's make this call, let IS rai se this money,"
from the folks who were energetic about getting things done. But
when I got up here at that time, 1961, I was like fifteen going
on sixteen, getting ready to get out of school the next year.
For a while it didn't make the same impression. As I said, the
summer of 1963 I was down there. They had the march and I saw it
on TV. At the same time in 1958 I guess it was when they
integrated Phillips [High] School, that must have been it, the
first time I ever saw him on tv he's been beaten with these
chains. I COUldn't relate to that. I said, "Why?" At the same
time we were looking at the fan mail, he is sitting right here,
like I'm sittin' here, you know, we made the bedroom into a
sickroom. He just pulled me over and patted my head and gave me
a kiss and said "Yeah, I'm all right, don't worry about it."
Then he started to laugh the way we are doing here now. I
realized that, no, he was not like all the rest of these
ministers.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I guess I am interested in knowing what it was
like living under the pressure of, I mean, you were something
37
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
like, oh • •
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I was born in 1946. When the house got
bombed I was eleven.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Okay, you were six or seven when you first got
to Birmingham I suppose it was. Three years later you were ten
or eleven. What was it like, the pressure, the telephone calls?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: In the first place it meant that whenever you
talked on the phone, you knew somebody was listening. I had to
learn that lesson. By talking to some friends of mine. I was
trying to get to know this little girl and somebody would come
and tell me about this conversation later. Not only would my
parents pick up on the phone whenever they wanted to, but the
phone was tapped. These folks called they had to be tapped so
they would act like they were trying to trace these folks
threatening us every day. When we would answer the phone
expecting to hear from Gerald, it was some guy cussing you out.
That works on your mind but when you block stuff out, you're not
really living a real life. You go through the motions but, one
time I was back after the summer. I guess it was about 1964. I
was up at Miss Clark's house. You know how far it is from where
I lived, two and a half blocks. All of a sudden there was this
light in my eyes and a pistol right in front of that. Who are
you and where are you going? A store had been robbed around the
corner. When I told them my name then, he got out of my face in
about forty seconds and went on about his business.
38
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
"Shuttlesworth" meant "leave him the hell alone" at that point.
If that had happened say 1961 before we left I might not be here
to tell you about it now . That time a name helped me get out of
some mess , that I didn 't have no business in no way , but I always
recognized it could have been a lot worse. I got friends whose
daddies had interaction with white folks and got cut up, got
fired , got this, got that. As far as I knew, myoId man was the
only Negro down there who could get things open against the white
people. He was like a comic strip character to me in a lot of
ways . Superman. Batman. It was how a kid looks at things.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Was there ever a time when you or one of your
sisters wanted to know what the hell was going on? Why were you
living under such tension?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: My mother explained it best with this phrase,
"Daddy's got a lot on his mind ." "Daddy's working on something
larger than what we can see right here." We had met King. Pat
knew him. She went over to his house on campus, Spellman's
campus . I had only seen him a couple of times. Daddy rode down
to Montgomery once and put me in the car. While him and King was
in the office , me and one of King ' s kids , I don ' t know who it was
were outside running around the church. I remember Montgomery
for that reason only. I lived there while I was a kid. But that
is all I remember about it, just that one little two or three
hour visit , then right back up here. He came to Birmingham but
everybody always talked about "the movement." Everybody always
39
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
talked about this white thing and so without even saying that you
know that whatever happens, you got backup. A lot of Black folks
couldn ' t say that. So I have always had the concept of whatever
I do, somebody's gonna come and check it out and see what's
happenin ' with me . I know a lot of folks that didn ' t have that.
The folks who didn't go to church . The folks whose family
structure wasn't as close. Now I didn't know this at the time,
but looking back, I can see we have always been more
conservative . I would have accepted the situation where somebody
else might not . I could look for that. I had a best friend
named Jerald whose father got killed on the job. They didn ' t
give him a damn thing for that . His mother is working right now .
Simply because U. S. Pipe didn ' t give a damn about these brothers
carrying all this heavy, much too heavy, I'm sure hernia
anybody on that job had a hernia. But once again he was working
like dogs in all this heat with all this dangerous equipment.
You get hurt on the job , nobody gave a damn. Mr. Revis, right
next door, lost part of his foot. There was nothing you could do
about it. I am surprised , in looking back, that dad didn't do
something with the labor group. He didn't get to that evidently.
Having backup makes a difference. It was one thing to have to go
and fight Mike Tyson, but if you got two or three folks with you ,
it won't be quite so bad .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was there ever a time when you , well, where
your mother or father explained the facts of Black life,
40
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
explained what racism was all about.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I had so many people tell me that. A lot of
them were simply running back to me what myoId man had said to
them. In a group setting he gives the philosophy of the
Movement. I get that through Buck, that guy I mentioned before.
lId get that through Julia, who spent as much time with us with
anybody but my mother. Through my aunt, or my uncle, sitting on
the porch. While I'm reading the sports section he is unwinding
from the day. He was explaining to me why auntie wouldn't let me
do something . It was dangerous out in the streets after a
certain time. Black folks and white folks. Everybody was
telling me this. It wasn't about no mother, father. The comment
he would make was if you ain't here at a certain time, I'll kick
your so-and-so. I understood why automatically because I heard
so many folks talking about it so many times. But because church
took so much time, a lot of what I know about myoId man, I know
because of folks telling me.
ANDREW M. MANIS: A lot of these things are not surprising to me,
I suppose, but it seems ironic to me because I remember growing
up in Birmingham and there was, but where our parents were very
often fearful about what Blacks might do in the streets at night,
or what have you, obviously racist stereotypes • • •
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: We were more afraid of what the police would
do to a Black person as opposed to what a Black person might do.
ANDREW M. MANIS: It strikes me as ironic, too, that while our
41
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
parents were telling us that it was dangerous to be out at night
your parents were telling you the same thing.
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Exactly , but for slightly different reasons .
You know , Emmett Till and a l l that stuff happening , this s t uff is
documented. Every t i me Pat would say she wanted to do something
or Ricky wanted to do something , auntie would say, "We l l , I read
j ust the other day a little boy got caught over in Wyl am and they
ain ' t seen him since. " Or, " some l ittle boy got caught by a car
on Lomb Avenue , and you can' t do that . " The answer was a l ways
"No!" The question is what kind of excuse are you going to get
for it. But I ' ve gotten that from so many different places . My
old man didn ' t have to tell me too much because there were so
many people he knew and had dealings with had already given me
his story. While he was in Cleveland , while he was in Atlanta,
while he was in wherever. My uncle , Ollie, my cousin, the oldest
fellows , who teased me about being the preacher ' s kid, at the
same time , look o u t for you like I was their l ittle brother.
Because they were trying to talk to my sisters too. I 'm gett ing
it from al l these d i ffe r ent directions . Then I go to school
where my mother was a substitute teacher. MyoId man did that
for a whil e too when he wasn ' t doing other things. They would
always pull me aside and do things for me that they don ' t do for
other folks. Many times making comments, " I 'm sorry to hear your
old man got beat up in f r ont of the school , we ' re with him. " I
would never pass that on because I would never get in the
42
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
situation , in the place to say, "Ms. So- and- So said to tell you
so and SO. " He knew this in general. The support that I was
getting was that everybody knew my situation. Some of them
understood it a lot better than I did, so they would go out of
their way to make my situation something I could deal with, is
what I am trying to say.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Can you give me some examples of the toll that
your father l s Civil Rights activities took on the family?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well we had this this car and at the part
where the NAACP got outlawed, his group got outlawed immediately
afterwards and they sued him and when they go to court, the
technique is to get put in jail, go to court, why you have to go
to court , you gotta get bailed. You get bailed out you got to
sign a note. All of this brother's property got taken one year.
That was part of our problem, the fact that he would go out and
speak and he is making money, he turns that money over to the
church and the Movement . He would go out of his way to make sure
it didn't look like he was taking these folks money. He would
dress himself like a country boy. He wasn ' t that flashy no way .
Folks expect the preacher to be driving a Cadillac so he
purposely buys a Chevrolet . That is right now what he drives.
He could drive what he wants to drive. He chooses to carry this
level of whatever it is. That was always a thing with me. If
there is anything negative about the whole thing with me and
Ricky and Pat, that is what you could write in a very
43
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
straightforward fashion. He would sacrifice his own personal
family's financial situation, not on a long term basis but on a
regular basis. This was one thing that was regular. It was
never about making money. It was about doing it for the cause
because it's right, etc. Now the first time I realized that
Martin Luther King wore silk suits, it got to be a bug in my
craw. Do you understand what I am saying? It is possible to
look good and still speak the truth. It is possible to take care
of your family and still save the world. I don't understand why
he couldn't see that. So that got to be a hassle with me. But
who gives a damn if things are going this way. You're a fifteen,
sixteen year old kid. It don't mean nothin'. But that was just
the negative side of our whole frame, it couldn't be emphasis
because the emphasis was, "Man, this brother's really on the
money." Folks were so proud of him. How are you not going to be
proud of someone everybody else in the whole Black community is
proud of? Like I say, the negative comments didn't get to me.
A fellow might say that, "yeah, so-and-so said your daddy was so­and-
so, Man" but they wouldn't say it to me. They might say it
behind my back or whatever. My friends would come and tell me so
I would get the negative stuff like that second hand which is the
best way to get it?
ANDREW W. MANIS: What kind of negative stuff did you get?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: These people would say, "Your old man ought
to leave these white folks alone before he get hisself and all of
44
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
us killed. " Or the kind of thing like "that troublemaking
preacher over there don ' t know that folks just want to be
preached to , they don't want to be carried out in the streets . "
That kind of stuff , stereo typical stuff that you would expect
looking back . But at that time, I didn ' t know how to take it one
way or the other. I didn ' t really understand what the hell was
-- how this thing worked . You know, it is easy to say now you
publicize a situation and then you get some help both financially
and morally. Then you try to bring in the government. This had
never been done before. So a lot of them I am sure didn't
understand . I don ' t fee l bad about not understanding it myself
at fourteen . Yeah, the negative comments came intermittently.
Most of the time it was more like "Hey, I hope your old man can
make it. " Or guys on the street would be jokin ' and jivin' and
they ' d say, "Yeah, it's a good thing you got the Lord on your
s i de or these white folks would just so and so and so. " But most
of the t i me it was about guys using their sense of humor like
your friend i n the hospital would make light of a situation that
was real serious. This guy could be shot any day. They knew
they could blow the building or come out and blow your house up.
When they blew the house up everybody was in it. He was in this
bed and the thing came down right next to him. Everybody was over
at our house. They ' d say it was a miracle that he didn ' t get
hurt, it was a miracle nobody got hurt.
ANDREW M. MANIS: That was going to be my next question. Tell me
45
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
-- narrate that story for me from your point of view.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: This was Christmas night. I am playing with
my new football suit. It was red, white stripes with a helmet.
I had the whole thing ready, laid out. What was I -- a twelve
year old kid . I had my little football suit on, still going
through the excitement of the day . Everybody is fussing at me to
put my stuff up. Thi s guy named Robison who lives up at the
other end of the street, was down there. One of the deacons of
the church was there telling daddy, I am sure, about the receipts
in church that Sunday, who he got to visit and this and that. My
mother was in the back cleaning up. The girls were going about.
The tree is here. The living room and dining room, he is in the
bedroom with this guy . I am in the dining room admiring the tree
and myself. The girls are cleaning up and putting the toys away.
All of a sudden there was this BOOM I The lights go out . Damn,
its dark, its dusty, can't nobody see nothin ' . Next thing I see
myoId man putting on his shirt and tie . Ricky ' s asking "Where ' s
daddy, where ' s so-and-so?" Nobody didn't know how to scream. It
was about talking. You didn't need to make too much noise . It
was totally quiet . No noise happenin'. I could hear
conversation there, there and there . It was about puttin'
everybody in one place seeing if anybody was cut up. You could
feel the glass and dust going past your face , but nobody got a
scratch. It was a miracle that the bomb was put on the side
where his room was for some reason. That side of the house was
46
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
just down. He just got up out of the bed. Got dressed because
he knew the folks was coming. He had to be ready when they came.
When they took the pictures, he was there with his shirt and tie.
Five minutes before he was layin' up in the bed talking about
church and this and that. All of a sudden there was three or
four hundred people out in front. They were hollering and
screaming. The lights, the police, the fire department and all
my friends and their mamas and daddies who all lived ten minutes
away, at the very most, they were lookin' to see how you was,
giving you a hug and a kiss, and getting ready to go to Julia's
house for a safe haven. Then for the next year we stayed at Mrs.
Morris's house. That thing having to drive from the West Side to
the North Side, go to school, come back, get carried home. From
that time it wasn't about goin' no where. Being the preacher's
kid, being young, looking at girls, just starting to date.
Wasn't nobody goin' too many places no way. Right? Now all of a
sudden you ain't going no where. Everybody enjoying your friends
because that's about as much as you're going to do. We couldn't
go out in public too much, except to go to these meetings, the
mass meetings where everybody was at.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You always went to those?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No, I didn't have to go to those because if
there was a planning thing, nobody had to go, just the leaders.
But on Monday nights, every Monday they went to the big meetings
and I went to about two thirds of them. If you're in school you
47
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
can ' t be there until nine or ten o ' clock . But when the
demonst rat i ons were goi ng on , everybody goes. You ain't got to
be asked either , because all your friends are going . You meet
the little girls there. It was just a social thing for the kids
and a life and death thing for the grown folks , man. Then I
started t o see -- I guess when you asked t hat question when did I
know he was different f r om normal . Then you could begin to sort
out that everybody ain ' t quite as strong as they say they are in
their support. Like I say , when the bomb dropped , then all of a
sudden folks started looking at this thing a little bit
different . Some folks there "Yeah , it ' s about time somebody took
up aga i nst those whi te f o l ks ." That ' s what some of them said.
They dropped that bomb , man , then they came back and bombed it
again three months later , four months later by the church and a
lot of folks , "Oh , no. Why don ' t you get the hell out of the
neighborhood? " This was the ghetto anyway . You ' ve been down
t here . I t is just here l ately that the streets got paved. These
folks don ' t need all that commotion.
ANDREW M. MANIS: The s t reets weren't paved at that time?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Hell, no. This was ghetto. I didn ' t realize
how much lower class we were living on until Unc l e Gene , who
lived on the South Si de , Si xth Avenue and Center Street . The
folks over there had these beautiful houses. We had mostly
houses shot gun . We had a nice big house. parsonages are always
decent. It wasn ' t about economics . It was just about what his
48
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
position was . He was the brokest preacher in the world . That
was t he onl y resentment I had for this whol e thing and that was a
personal thing . That wasn ' t the movement. I didn't have no
problem with him doin ' t hat because he was just readin l the
Bible. The Bible will tell you to do that . You can understand
that totally. But I can ' t understand -- the Bible does not say
deny yourself basics . If my mother present ed him a situati on
where he got four kids , you ' re making this much money. He asked
us to do so- and- so. That can be a problem. Why he ' s trying to
be altruistic , why you trying to make this point? I 'm trying to
get to school the next day in some shoes that hurt. Ricky tried
to do this wi th a dress t hat don ' t fi t . That ' s bull crap .
That ' s just a personal attitude . He was aware of that . Once
again , he chose to do it that way. Once again, coming from where
he ' s coming from I can see that. There ain ' t no way I can
criticize him . I 'm just telling you how I felt at that moment.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I got a couple more key events in his career
that I want to ask about from your point of view, what you
observed , how you felt when these things happened. One of these,
of course , is something that happened to you. We will get to it
in due course?
What were your thoughts or impressions about the September 1957
attack at Phillips [High School] ?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Like I said , I did not know that was going to
happen. I wasn ' t on the plan because I wasn ' t going. Ricky and
49
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Pat knew about it because they were going. In fact I teach a
story in my eighth grade class about a little Black girl going to
integrate school, and how she reacted. I didn't have no action.
I didn't have no knowledge of it until it actually happened. I
went to the house and all these people, two or three white folks,
which was totally unreal at that time. It was the first time I
had ever seen white folks in my house.
ANDREW M. MANIS: First of all, where were you when they drove up
at 10:00 or so that morning?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I was in school. That's what I'm sayin' see.
They had not gone to our school to try to integrate this one. I
went to mine. Got out at the regular time. Walked home. Here
were all these people. I found out a couple of them were
reporters later. White folks and Black folks, oh no, we don't
have that. We don't have that in the community, let alone the
house. I hope you ask about that mother's day mass because that
was the next time they had all those guys and they were all
grossed out like these movies you see. At this point in time,
that is when he got to be larger than life to me. If I had seen
him out there dealing with the brother who was cut on the street
telling everybody what to do and making this brother comfortable
and asking about church and doing all this at once. But now, he
is laid out. Bruises, cuts. His attitude is "Hey, we'll be back
in it." Ain't this nice to the guys on TV. Blows me away. He
is not concerned about the fact that he's damn near dead. He is
50
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
concerned about the fact that they got the publicity. I said,
"Well, damn, do it take all this?" But at the same time because
of the preparation, not that somebody sit down and say, "now this
is going to happen." Not Black coaching, but the attitude that
spirituality brings to you. You been through all this. You
don't know about it but that's got to work out too because that
is just the way things go for people who make it for one reason
or another. I've never been in the position where I didn't see
something I could do in terms of
"It's time to steal sornebody's .
"Wow,
"
it's time to drop out."
No, it wasn't about that.
It's always when I would go and ask for help. I might be
embarrassed to ask. I might not feel comfortable about asking
because I'll burn the bridge that I shouldn't have, but it was
always on me. I've had some of the most supportive people in the
world through him and my mother. That's the whole thing, I have
to keep going back to that. All my memories are clouded and
filtered through all these folks who "Now, your daddy's not
feeling too good, when you go in there • • " Lot of brothers
outside tell me that. I get it was how my sister say "Daddy's
broke up." You have to go back to the house prepared for him to
be sick. Somebody else has already told me. " Yeah, they're
trying to integrate the schools . . " But when I walk in the
house and see him, it's strange, it's bizarre, but once again,
that just escalates his influence as far as I can see. I said,
"Damn, he lived through that." just like the rest of them. I'm
51
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
just in awe .
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about your mother? How did she respond to
that event? I know that she was stabbed .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Like I said, she was very sweet lady but one
who had gumption to say what she thought. MyoId man did all
this and that "my kids last.1I She'd say "Why?" That would lead
to a ltercations in the house but it would blow over because she
let it blow over .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I mean her response to the Phillips High School
situation?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Her response was . .
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did she feel about it afterwards? Isn't
that the first time she experienced personally any violence?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, you got to remember, the preacher ' s
wife gets verbal abuse by being a preacher's wife. "She thinks
she ' s better than other folks. " I got those comments more than
the ones I got about him. Before we get to this thing about what
she is doing. So it is always about her being misinterpreted and
misunderstood. When he said "Take us off the bus." She said
"Put us back on the bus. " Somebody said, "Hey, she gonna put her
kid up above mine?" So , once again , if I 'm gonna choose between
one of them, I'm gonna choose my mamma . Because she is
supporting me whil e he i s doing this and that. His thing is
"this" and her thing is "me." So , the way I'm looking at it his
thing is crazy. I can see the point . I can see the value. Go
52
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
ahead with that because l i fe got to go on. Her thing is just
what you expect . Afterwards , it was like "Hey , you know it ' s
time to start thinking about letting somebody else spread this."
But I'm fourteen years old . She ain't discussing this with me.
I am talking about what I hear in arguments. I am talking about
what I hear , the comments she makes to her friends. The comments
that he makes from the pulpit. "Now you know what my wife says ."
That is the way myoId man deals with things. Everybody knows
everybody's business . Ain't no thing to him. That's why I
wouldn't tell him I had surgery until it was time. Because he ' d
tell everybody else . "You going to go in the hospital?" I would
have t o talk to everybody. Everybody ' s going to hear from here
to California before it happens . That just brings up emotional
problems to worry about. Anyway , her thing was , you need to
consider your personal self first. That is typical. That is
what anybody would expect .
ANDREW M. MANIS: She had some ongoing health probl ems resulting
from that stab wound, didn ' t she?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: High blood pressure . She always had that and
like I said , the emotional problems that we were dealing with
were multiplied with her. She worried about her husband and four
kids and herself, besides watching this guy go out here and do
this and that. She tried to raise her kids and trying to support
them, make sure they had what they ought to have to make go
through life . Then she wants to express herself as a woman. She
53
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
wants to open up a little day care center for some kids. "That's
not a good idea, you need to be home taking care of these kids. "
No, he wouldn ' t give her no money. So she wanted to go make some
money. She was being creative with a problem. Right? That
creates more problems. You know, the stereotypical things about
the male and female relationship. Sit in the house and be the
mamma. Like I say, when a young teenager starts to think for
himself, I said , "What is this brother's problem that he couldn't
see her point of view on anything?" But, you know, personal
relationships, you don ' t value comments as you should, because
they all become part of the piece. This is the going to be the
way she is going to react and I know it so I 'm just going to have
a hard line. Her line was just as hard . She is the advocate and
he had to have things proven to him. All she's got to do is hear
about it and she i s going to take care of . They are both
supporting me . I can't complain either way, but I empathize , I
sympathize. In the next few years I would become verbal to her.
"Layoff. This is not good, My Dear, [the children ' s name for
their mother] . This not good~ we need to do so and so." He
says, "Well, no , you can ' t talk like that." In other words, if
I were going to cri ticize him it woul dn ' t be to his face , it
would be to my sisters and she would always hear and her t hing
was always to intercede and say now you know he ' s so-and- so .
When she was dealing with him, I got to hear her real attitude .
You talk to your kid about what ' s right and you respond on the
54
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
present basis of how you feel. He's verbal, she's verbal. We
got to hear quite a bit through that period of time. This is
what he sacrificed, a chance to come home and just be with your
family. He couldn't do that. He came in, we automatically
stopped talking to see if he was going to walk in the house and
fallout like he usually did. Be real quiet so he can get back
up and be Superman with these folks out here. That gets old.
Get old quick. So, when he wakes up, if he's in the mood, you
can have a good time around him but most of the time he's
snapping at you. When he leaves we're happy. We can go on back
to being ourselves. But when he comes in, you can just look at
him and see. After a while you get to know your parents
feelings. Some days, red flag. Yeah, that was the pressure,
that he couldn't come home and relax because her thing was to let
him be reminded that we could do a little bit more for our kids
and ourselves and his thing was "No, I don't even want to give
the impression that this was to help me." I still think that was
not the smartest point of view that he could have taken towards
that. There is no value in confronting him with it. This is in
response to your question.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What is your evaluation or your viewpoint
concerning your parents' divorce? I know this is getting into
personal stuff.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Hey, it's just plain old depressing. After I
took four or five deep breaths, I'm talking about I think this is
55
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
real stupid. I think you all should really think this through
again . This is real late in the game. I love both of you , but
both of you all are getting on my nerves . II That was the last I
had to say about it. At that point I stopped dealing with both
of them. I didn ' t want to act like I was supporting him over
her. And I didn 't want to just leave her hanging. At the same
time my two s i sters , Ricky and Pat , whatever it was she was
doing, they were right there. My thing has always been made easy
in the sense that I ain 't got to do nothing. Someone else is
going to take care of it for me . I can come by twice a week and
see how my mother is doing. And right now I ain't gonna see
about what myoId man's doing because Pat and Ricky gonna see
about him , regardless . They knew his doctor schedules better
than he do . It's getting l ike that for me now. But it has
always made it easy for me to just go off to the side and have my
own feelings and thoughts and attitudes. In that case, I just
couldn't handle it. I couldn ' t deal with it. I thought it was a
very unfair situation but before anybody could deal with that
situation, the folks at church had already made up their minds.
Cut and dried . We talked about that before how the preacher ' s
kid is one thing and the preacher ' s wife is another. My mother
was getting tired of bei ng ster eotyped preacher's wife. You got
to look nice , not make a fool of herself. Don 't embarrass the
church. By that standard this lady is a 11 0% preacher ' s wife.
She was never appreciated for that. People want her to do what
56
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
he is doing. They want her to do this and that. I've always
felt, and this had nothing to do with him but it had to do with
this church thing. The preacher's kid is one thing. The
preacher's wife is another. That is a hell of a "Catch 22."
It's hard for you to do anything as a preacher's wife. Some of
the people who acted like they cared the most for her are
actually trying to get close to myoId man. If you tell him
about Revelation [Baptist Church] that lady, Autieve Smith, was
my mother's best friend. He's got his hands on the real thing
itself. To that extent I've always felt that she was the
underdog with whatever was going on. Whatever she chose to do
somebody was going to criticize her. Like I say, people ain't
gonna criticize myoId man to his face very often. They will get
into arguments with him and discuss. On the other hand, some
woman, they will talk to her any way. So, I saw her holding up
his interests, in every way you could imagine, tolerating, his
bad attitude coming in the house. And then lacking anything for
that. I'm talking about in terms of people just saying good
things about you. She was a very sweet woman. Not because she
was my mamma, but because she went out of her way to say nice
things to folks. And you know when you're a young person, what a
person says is not as important as how they say it. Like I say,
the support she gave me was the kind that when I went to school
in junior high, you asked me about being playful. I was a clown
all the time when I got to junior high because I am two years
57
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ahead of myself. I am with these older people, the only thing I
can do is clown, if I am not talking to some girl and not really
knowing where the conversation is going to lead anyway. Get in
there and laugh it off and go on with the fellows. Okay, when I
get in trouble he didn't have time to go up to the school with
me. She did. And when she came it was about "What are you all
doing to my baby?" In other words, there ain't nothing I could
do to make her feel that I was wrong. That kind of total support
is what mothers are for. I've got mine. I ain't gonna complain,
but at the same time when you go to dad you are going to have to
discuss with him where you were wrong first. Ain't nothing wrong
with that. But I'm just saying when you're growing up you got to
understand where a person is coming from. Now I can see his
point. That is the way I deal with my son. Talk to me first
about what happened. Then ask me for the money. Because it
might be that I don't want to give it to him because I don't
trust him. I can see now how that myoId man was dealing with me
in the same way I was dealing with mine. Evidently men don't
have that~ at least me and myoId man don't have that. But I saw
her get the short end of the stick in so many different instances
relating to the church, the movement and everything else. This
woman lived already under pressure, high blood, and this and that
and it's got to work on your mind. Looking back, I don't see how
in the hell she stood it all that time. There was one article in
the newspaper, I guess it was a Dayton paper or some kind of
58
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
paper where they had a thing on Caretta King and Ruby
Shuttlesworth, the two Civil Rights ministers' wives and what
life was like. If you don't have that, except at the church,
Ricky had it out for this program. I have never seen it in my
life until last year but that's the kind of thing that I am
trying to say here, somebody should have got up and -- somebody
should have given these ladies some special commendations .
Whatever Caretta Scott King do at this moment, she can't do
nothing bad in my mind. She always put up with more hell than
most people would in their lifetime , three or four. So, while at
least, King got to travel . At least he got to see the world. At
least he got the ego trip. What did she get? See what I am
saying? So all the criticisms and all the negativity, I saw that
corne down on her. I'm sure that Mrs. King is just as up tight as
whatever -- I don ' t know what she is taking, but if she ' s just
getting by on no medicati on , she is a hell of a woman. That was
rough, man. The violence, the tension, the violence, the tension
and while you 're trying to organize to try to get this together,
you ain't got no guarantees. So she stuck with him through all
that . I thought it was very unfair on his part. He's sittin '
here. He ' s runnin ' back and forth. What year was that? You got
the date? I don ' t even know, about
ANDREW M. MANIS: 1970?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Okay , by this time he ' s given up the thing.
He still travels back and forth every once in a while. I thought
59
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
that wasn ' t t o either one of t he i r advantage. And yet I can see
how i t would have been . If you were in the i r shoes you woul d
feel more intensely . I'm sittin ' here running off at the mouth .
I didn ' t go through what either one of them went through .
ANDREW M. MANIS; You might be guessing at this poi nt but from
your perspective , what woul d you think were the reasons they
f i nally decided to go ahead and get a divorce?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I have no idea. By that time , 1970 , you say?
By that time I had been married a couple of years.
ANDREW M. MANI S : I beli eve that's true. She died in 1 97 1 .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Right , t hey had been divorced a year . Okay.
Like I say , I had been married by that time . Start off just
going away from churc h and them. Like I say, this was leading up
to before it act ually happened. When peopl e separate you got a
mental problem . You got to support both of t hem. In the first
p l ace , I didn ' t know myoId man at that time. I tol d you that .
I know her . I can talk with her. I don ' t want to get up in her
face and say , "Yeah , you should have done thi s ten years ago ."
Or, "You shouldn ' t have done this at al l. " Whatever she does , I
have to accept that . It was so hard for me to verbalize , " I love
you, whatever you do , I 'm with you . II I did that , but once again ,
I didn ' t have a chance to do that wi th him. He was busy. He is
going here and there and so you wonder wi thin yoursel f how you
are going to be rece i ved by either one of them. Sometimes she
have her bad days. Don ' t tell me nothing about that. You can ' t
60
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
expect somebody to playa stereotypical role for you in reality
every day.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, I ask you this because my parents got a
divorce and for a long time all the blame in my mind was on my
father. But gradually I've begun to see that it took both. My
mother had some weaknesses as well that weakened the marriage.
So I'm wondering.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That's why I don't like to speculate on stuff
like that. I don't, I never got into either one of their
personal business to the point where I knew anything except who
their best friends were at that moment. In other words,whose
face I saw in the house most often. But the arguments were
always right there. They argued within the next room and they're
raising their voice, cussing and this and that, so hey, you get
to hear what you get to hear. All I can say is what I see. I
can't relate to what might have, could have and should have. All
I can see is this lady gave up a whole bunch of her life at the
same time he was giving his up and he suffered on a personal
basis and so did she. I could just see two people suffering. I
could see four kids who had always been like this. Whatever was
happening you could count on these folks being here. Lot of
other folks supporting too, but all of a sudden that was gone. I
got mad and moved myself away from that somewhat. My two older
sisters got mad. It was just a rocky point in time for me from a
lot of different directions. When you get married and you don't
61
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
have the economic situation that you'd like to have, you're
scuffling. And when you're scuffling, you ain't in nobody else's
personal problems, you're in your own. I think it was, hell, two
years later I was divorced. So it really didn't impact me as
much as it might have had I been by myself, or still in school at
that time. See, my youngest sister was still in school. That is
why I spend so much time with her now. At the time when she went
off, away from the family, like nobody has ever done, even when
Pat went, she was up the street from King and his family. She
dealt with them. She was by herself. So I started hanging with
her more so. While Ricky and I used to be tight when we was
kids, we still are, now it's me and Carolyn who talk together
about personal problems first and foremost. You know,
everybody's still close. Don't get me wrong. But at the point
where she went out and became a loner, more to herself. I was
like that myself. There was a point, well after they got
divorced I stopped going to church. The biggest thing with her,
"Why in the hell are you going to this church, as if you support
him, and all the folks dragging you around." Talking about how
you're wrong and everything else. I know this. I'm miserable.
I'm watching her and she just come in there and be herself. I
couldn't understand that. I haven't yet understood that. But
when people are going through their thing, nobody is supposed to
understand. I know that now. At that time it was just too
painful, so I just dropped away from it. I look back and I have
62
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
to rebuke myself. I should have been there doing what I could do
for both of them. I wasn't doin l nothin' for neither. I was
just going off by myself and feeling bad about the whole
situation. So many folks with so much energy and keeping them
two people together for various purposes, it was sad. They could
have broke up way back when the violence started happening. If
she wanted to live a little better life or work and this and
that. They almost got a divorce down in Birmingham, the way we
heard it. So they got through that . She got up here and it was
slack in comparison . But after you have gone through so much, a
little bit of weight breaks you down whereas before you could
have handled twice that, three times that.
ANDREW M. MANIS : The same problems you ' ve been talking about
were in effect .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No, no, I didn't say that. I am saying when
they got to Cincinnati I stopped knowing either one of them. I
went off to school in 1966 and stayed a year. I got married in
1969 and went off and that was it for me altogether. So we are
not talking about this familiarity like we had before. I just
know that they had been having problems . I was uncomfortable
around him all my life and now all of a sudden she's not around
to be a bridge to carry the messages back and forth and let me
know what he ' s thinkin' and l et him know what I'm thinkin' . Who
else gives a damn that much? You know what I'm sayin ' ? So the
need for us to communicate had been gone . Now we had to
63
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
communicate with each other.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Were your sisters uncomfortable around him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: As far as I know they'd never had an
uncomfortable moment in their life. They totally supported the
both of them the whole way through. At the time when they got
the divorce my two sisters were living two doors down the street
from myoId man. I used to cuss all of them out. rid say, "Why
in the hell are you licking this man's ass and he's doggin' your
mamma out every day?" Maybe they understood something I didn't
understand. Maybe they - I'm sure they were more mature. But
once again, all I could do was say what I could see. I was
trying to be honest with myself and them. I said, "You ought to
go do something else for my mamma. Here is this idiotic twenty
twenty-one year old telling his mamma what she ought to be doing.
You know just out of emotions. Nobody ever told me "Why don't
you shut the hell up?" My sisters, they just let me go on, and
if I had to level with you now, Ricky abused me at that point. I
was just upset with everybody. I was upset with them for not
helping them to get together, but it was beyond their control.
They knew that and they just tried to help both. So, as I say,
when my mother did pass now, all of a sudden we are back together
for the wrong reasons. I still didn't want to be bothered with
that. I went through at least a year's period, maybe a year and
a half or two, when I didn't even fool with church. I would go
to another church, maybe. But that one for sure, no. It just
64
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
wasn 't about me being abl e t o expr ess that at that moment. I got
over it. I grew up, but once again, it was a very painful thing
and I don't want to even conjecture about how it was but I do
know how it was back then. It was a hell of a scuffle f or both
of them. He's a brother . She ' s a bright sister. But Black
ladies COUldn't do what they can do now back then. There have
a lways been outs t anding Black women who were business people and
this and that, but if you 're a minister's wife, and you a in't the
Adam Clayton Powell ' s , up in New York in a whole differen t
situation , you ain 't gonna find too much happiness in the Deep
South in the ghetto. As I said , this is the dregs of society. I
know she had seen better than that. She was a college girl in
the fifties. There weren ' t that many Black college women.
Simply put, the numbers just weren't there. So she was blessed
in that area , but at the same time she was dealing with just day
to day things. And very well I thought. She was abl e to
function every l evel. I'm not saying she was high c lass and he
was l ow . I am saying how her people had more than his people
had, simply put . So you know the kind o f comments both families
are going to make . Realistically. And so we heard all those
comments. It kind o f pissed me off when early on that she would
get the nasty remarks for something he was doing . He said,
"Well, she don't do no better." He wouldn't a llow us t o do no
better. Who am I to stand up and say, "We ll, yeah , Aunt Cleo , so
and so ." Aunt Cleo would knock the hel l out of me; she knocked a
65
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
hole in the wall and left the stain on it."
ANDREW M. MANIS: I believe that.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah, that's a rough chick, myoId man's
sister. * [Some material not recorded; resumes with a question,
the Freedom Riders] the president or governor or somebody, was
making these long distance calls down. You probably know the
dates better than I do at this point.
ANDREW M. MANIS: It was 1961.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: May of 1961, Mother's Day. From the bus
station they cracked all these heads, burned the buses. They had
burned the buses earlier and they came into Birmingham and the
only place they would know to go was to our house. That was the
second time I saw white folks in our house. Well, whichever came
first, I can't recall now. It was all mixed together. But this
white guy was in there and his head was wide open. And for some
reason he was showing the scars to somebody so it was like Friday
the 13th, man, this brother was showing his scar or they was
lookin' at his head or something. I just happened to walk in ~
house and there was this white guy with his head all cracked
open. There were some Black folks over here all beat up. Some
of them were mad. Some of them were glad they were through with
it. But a lot of them just proud to be associated. Like I say,
all these emotions were always there to be seen. Any fool could
see if they were just paying attention. Because I wasn't old
enough to participate in the conversation, I could just look.
66
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Out of all this confusion he was still the man in charge. Some
decisions had to be made as to whether we were going to continue
this and do it another way or do this or that. His thing was
always, IIAII right." If you make a mistake like that, it would
be just that bad, or just that good if you go ahead, So the
biggest thing is that I was impressed that these white folks were
in our house but nobody said nothin' about "Something bad is
gonna happen in a minute." Our plan was just a little bit
different than everybody else's thing. If you saw a white person
walking on 29th Avenue you would have to look around and see
what's gonna happen. But because daddy was in so much stuff
all the time it didn't quite upset me as much as it would have
ordinarily but it did add to the aura, when this guy is into
something real deep, real mystical, real spiritual, you might as
well just get out of the way and let him go. Ain't nothin' you
can do with him. I have never thought that could be duplicated in
our society. Right now somebody just like King with the same
fluency, the same charisma, they'd either laugh at him or kill
him immediately. Like I say, that was just a specific historical
occurrence I just can't see happening again. The Black folks
were the only ones who would tolerate the kind of abuse they had
to take back then. Even though you are fighting a spiritual war,
the things those brothers had to give up to get to that are just
awesome to me. I was looking at it up close in person.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Is there anything specific you can remember
67
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
about seeing, I assume it was Jim Peck.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Peck! Right , the name comes back .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you talk to him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh , no. I didn ' t talk to him. I was more
interested to know who the other folks were because I am checking
to see if my mom and dad i s in it. So Peck didn't matter to me.
I just wanted to go back and make sure he was there and she was
there. Then my thing i s goi ng back to my little every day hippy­dippy
life. I was l i ke ... who was it on TV? Beaverl I
didn't have no responsibilities. I wasn ' t in it. I worked out
of it. I could see it. It affected me and it was totally
unusual. My sisters were there and they saw this brother get
beat up. They saw his mom get stabbed. I didn ' t see that. I
heard about. You know , the after effects and this and that but
by the same token when we left I had never been in a
demonstration.
ANDREW M. MANIS : You had been arrested in Gadsden .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That was in 1960. That was after this camp
[Highlander Folk School] where we had had the experience of being
with white folks for the first time in my life on a regular
basis . White girls , oh my goodness. White girls , white boys ,
white men , white women. First time in my whole experience.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Before you get on with that story , what did you
think about your first experience of being with white peopl e?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: It was beautiful. I was young enough at that
68
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
time, it wasn't about nothin' but playing ball and acting like
you wanted to talk to the girls. I didn't want to talk to the
girls. What am I going to say? Once you get into it, once you
say "Hi, I'm so-and-so and you're so-and-so." What is the next
step? I didn't know at that time. Right? That was enough for
me to be popular and know everybody. We had to learn and we
basically got to know each other. Ray and me and you would be in
this camp. By the time this camp was over we'd know everybody's
life story. All day. Your whole purpose was to get to know each
other. Your whole purpose was to sing songs that make you come
out of yourself. Go out and play ball and be yourself. Sit down
and discuss the history of racial relations and talk about your
experience. By the time it was over, I knew where everybody
lived, how old they are, how much their family , it was a
totally unique situation. Somebody had a hell of a good idea in
doing this but I think it was about 30 or 40 kids, maybe more,
from allover, white and Black. For six weeks we had been
counselled to just get along and to know each other. The whole
purpose for what I could see was just
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any of those white kids?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Anne Kaufman, the one that I rode home with
on the bus before we transferred buses. A girl named April, a
Black guy named Charles from South Carolina. Had this geechy
accent. That Black boy with an accent, that was funny.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any of the stories or anything
69
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
about these white kids that impressed you?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, what impressed me was that they was all
just like me. I thought they was gonna be something different.
This guy, Guy Carowan(?), have you ever heard of him? Guy was
deaf the whole way through. He was a folk singer. He does "This
Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land." Real uplifting
brother. The most embarrassing thing I ever did in my whole life
at Highlander, we were playing softball. Guy does something
goofy and I laughed at him. I feel bad about that till this day.
Guy was not the kind of person that even gave a damn about
softball. You talk with him out there playing with us. We knew
he was an all right guy. I got the wrong aspect about some of
the kids in class. You say something and they laugh for the
wrong reason. That hurts me to even think that I laughed at him
trying to help me feel comfortable. But he didnlt care. It
didnlt bother him at all. live met him since and he didnlt even
remember it. But he was there and everybody would sing these
songs, listen to him sing and then weld learn them. It really
gave me a chance to think about white folks as something other
than the enemy. Thatls the point. It broadened my perspective
more than anything else could have. I had decided I would not
have been able to enjoy this under any other circumstances but I
had both my sisters there with me. If I had been there by
myself, it probably would have took two weeks to get to know
anybody because 11m not the most outgoing person in the world.
70
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/ 13/89
But , having Ricky there , they meet somebody I know and it makes
it just that much easier. And the guy who was from South
Carolina , he had met everybody by hisself. Nobody had that break
but me. So after it was over we go on back home. Everybody
crying . Everybody got new type friend . Most of us neve r saw
each other again . Some of us wrote for a couple of years . But,
after we broke up i n , I guess, Nashville , to get the bus on down
home, the bus was crowded and no standing in front of this line.
"You all niggers move back to the back." The issue was suppose
to have been standing in front of the line . All of a sudden the
issue was "why are these guys so nasty to these little Black
kids?" And we were Black kids. So , the first chance we get to
stop .
ANDREW M. MANIS: There weren ' t any other Black kids on the bus?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don 't remember. All I remember is that, I
mean once again , me and my two sisters and everybody go for
themselves - - this was not a Highlander bus . After we got off
the Highlander bus and changed over, the whole atmosphere ' s
different. Just getting home now. All of a sudden we were
confronted by this guy . There was no place to go . We couldn ' t
move to the back. Them people didn't want us standing allover
them. It was crowded . So he really had no right to be nasty.
He went beyond that because of the way white folks deal with
Black folks. His dander was up . Our dander was up a little. We
said , "No , we ain ' t movi ng. We are gonna stay right. And let's
71
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/ 13/89
just go. Give us a seat and we ' ll sit down. " In other words , we
started mouthing at him as he was mouthing at us. So he stops i n
Gadsden and calls the pol ice. Police come and take me, Ricky and
Pat to the jail , put them up here and me right up under them .
This is like 6:00 , 7:00 , 8:00 at night . We get the one phone
call . We called myoI d man . We sit there and wait . I don't
know, I mean , you k now, you' re in the jail, man . There is no way
t o deal with that except .
ANDREW M. MANIS : You were 1 3 , right?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : This was 61. I was born in 46. I was 15 .
Getting ready for - - I was born it 46 , this is 60. Must have
been 14. Yeah! This is like you trap me and come back . This is
60 . I was 14 .
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did it feel being in jail?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: I t was dead. It was a deadening thing . But
if you got your people with you , it ain ' t quite as bad.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Anybody in the cell wi th you?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Nobody was in the cell with me . They were i n
the cell together. Nobody else but them were right there but
there were grown prisoners. This wasn ' t no juvenile detention
center . This was jail in Gadsden. We had just got out of
Highlander. It was about singing. We spent the night singi ng.
We sang all them Guy Carowan songs . We talked to each other
through the bars. I don ' t recall the man being ugl y about us
communicating wi th each other either .
72
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about the other people in the jail?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Like I said man, not backwards, straight
ahead. You know, you're scared to death. I didn't want to see
anybody next to me. He might reach up and snatch my little butt.
I'm small now but hell, I didn't grow until, what was it, 1962.
It was only in 1962 that I matured physically. I was out of high
school then. I couldn't run track, for example, until after I
was out of high school. I wasn't strong enough to train.
Anyway, this is how we spent the evening until myoId man finally
got there about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Then we heard this
loud talking and carrying on. The door was unlocked and we
walked out. At that moment, all that was past tense.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did he say to you when he first saw you?
What do you say to him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't even recall, man. In the rush of all
of that when he showed up, he had about six or seven other people
with him that I saw. It would have been foolish for him to have
come any other way. Me and Rick and Pat came out. His first
thing is all this about "you all right?" That's always the way
it is going to be. He checked to make sure. He didn't take our
word for it. Spin you around. Look at you. If something had
been wrong he would have had something to go after these people
about. Once he knew everyone was all right he went about taking
care of the business and letting these people know this is bull
shit. Jailing these kids. It wasn't about no family reunion.
73
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
You know his roots were there. It was about "Give me my damn
kids and don ' t this no more . This ain ' t no way to do ." Like I
said, by the time it was over with , we were so tired and run down
from all this singi ng and all this tension and all the joy you
had at the camp and the sadness you had about breaking up. And
the tension about "Damn , this guy would really call the police on
us? " That was shocking . That was the most shocking th i ng that
this bus driver actually called the police for not standi ng
behind this line.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You didn ' t mention them choking you?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: It wasn ' t worth mentioning . When you ' re
dealing with white people you don ' t fight with them . This has
always been the thing , see , we walk in there and the guy wants to
butcher you He say now I want you t o do this and that and my
thing is to - - I 'm verbal by now . I ' ve been a quiet person but
by now I 'm verbal. Because I am fronting off . My two sisters
was there. I'm the only boy. He get me around the neck. I 'm the
man. My job is to be verbal and I said "I I m going to get you
so- and-so. " The guy t hrows me up against the wall like this.
That ' s the kind of thing that wasn't important , right. But the
deal was it either had to do with him putting all of us in the
same place, making a phone call . It might have had to do with
the way he was treating Ricky and Pat , you know. "Come here."
"Wait a minute, man (gestures choking)??" But when he did that
to me the two of them went to acting a fool. Then all of a
74
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
sudden there was this big commotion with, cops don ' t have too
much commotion with Black kids in a Southern town in the middle
of the night. By now it was about 9:00 - 10:00, right . Me
getting choked was no big deal in the long term of getting the
hell out of that jail. This was life and death. That choking
didn't bother me at all. Matter of fact, when it was over and we
were back in Birmingham talking about it, Ricky says "and the man
choked you too. n I said "Oh! " That was the least of my concern .
First thing was like "Are we going to be okay in general? How we
gonna make it through thi s night. Then when our old man got
there, are they going to kill his ass right in front of us?" You
know what I 'm sayin ' ? It wasn't about just walking in and
walking out. They tried to provoke him.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you recall any comments to you about being
Shuttlesworth ' s kids?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , the terms come to mind. But "jailbird"
was the word that was used either on the good side or the bad
side. The Blacks would say, "Yeah , that jailbird so-and- so . " Or
folks who don ' t like you. It was "yeah, that jailbird preacher's
kid . " The same thing just from whichever side they were taking
it. Folks don't make no long speeches that I remember ta l king to
me. There were comments like , "Hey , I was with your old man all
the time. I ain't been out there ." But they would explain to me
why . They would give me all this history and then just go on.
Somebody else would say , "Well , yeah, I ' ve always thought your
75
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
old man should do this and that and this and that." Like I'm his
agent or whatever. People used me as a sounding board to express
themselves. Like I said, most of the time it just went in one
ear and out the other. I found out real early that most of the
people that say they know myoId man don't know him at all. Even
in the church, way back, a guy would say "Yeah, your daddy said
he wants to do so-and-so." I can't tell you how many times
somebody told me myoId man said something and it was untrue.
See what 11m saying. They are just motivating me in the first
place that myoId man said, they think that by saying he said
this that it would get them over and they'd be successful. After
while, when they said myoId man said it would just make me do
opposite, just as a reaction. I outgrew that and just went on to
evaluate myself. But over and over again.. I'm in Disney
World with my baby. A guy walks up and says III met you at your
father's church.1I See what I'm sayin'? I'm just sittin' there
at the gate, right. Another person comes up out of the blue and
said III saw you at Greater New Light [Baptist Church]." He
shakes my hand and goes on. He could have just as easily have
come up and said "Yeah, your old man damn near got me killed."
I'm in the laundromat up here on Reading Road, six months ago. I
told you about this. A guy says IIYeah, I come from Birmingham.
Your sister killed this policeman down there. Bull Connor, I
think it was. Ran over him with a car. One of Shuttlesworth's
girls." I said, "Man, you're crazy. My sister wasn't even
76
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1(13(89
driving at that time." And yet he was so adamant I just stopped
talking to him because he knew that one of Reverend
Shuttlesworth's girls had run over a policeman and killed him.
They had to get out of town as a result. That is the kind of
bullshit I am telling you that people manufacture in their heads.
ANDREW M. MANIS: While you're on ??
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh, yeah. While we were there. He brought
this lie all the way up to Cincinnati. And just happened to hear
my name. I told this lady my name because we had gone to school
together, way back when. He said, "Yeah, I know you and your
daddy and all your people." I ain't never seen this guy before
in my life. Older people were even worse. "Yeah, me and your
daddy go back a long ways." They don't no more know him than the
man in the moon. You know what I'm saying?
ANDREW M. MANIS: What do you think are the most important ways
your father has changed over the years?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, the fact is, speaking of that, daddy's
slowed down. The only thing daddy's done is slow down. There is
a part of daddy that is always reaching to do something else.
You can see that. He's thinking ahead of things that's got to be
done. He really has not changed. He's just going a lot slower
than he used to. Hopefully the stuff that he has, well, like I
say, he hasn't never changed. It has always been hard for him to
relax. When he relaxes it almost seems like he is feeling guilty
77
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
because he ain ' t doin ' no more. This brother asks a lot of
himself. And about whether when he was a kid, this and that and
this and that. Like I say, I ' ve heard him talk about his
childhood , his marriage , his mamma , all that stuff, listening to
the sermon and lecture and responses .
that from. But it is mystical to me.
I can ' t see where he gets
That's for better and for
worse . Being driven is all right as long as everybody else is
being driven too. You can see where you are headed. It does not
necessarily mean that you can't look and see how other folks are
taking things. That ' s something he had not developed as a young
man. The fact that he could get away with a lot of stuff in
terms of the way he relates to people . That ' s no good for him.
It took him a long time to realize he didn ' t have to win an
argument some time to get his point across. He would just say
what he had to say. Most folks who are with him gonna do it
anyway. He feels like he has to do things in argumentative
fashion. You got to make an order as opposed to a suggestion.
When in point of fact anybody who deals with him knows that
whatever he says is exactly the way he wants it. Nobody takes
his plans and adds to them or subtracts from them. It ' s just
whether or not this is something he is going to deal with . You
always know where he ' s corning from. That does not work to his
advantage sometimes. Because I've seen folks comment and abuse
him on that basis. I really feel for him in that case . Because
his friends almost always , I concern myself with "What is their
78
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
purpose here? Are they trying to be a part of his glory or are
they trying to take something from him or whatever?" Usually I
was not privy enough to know for sure but in a lot of instances I
could see he, -- one brother would be at a lot of meetings and
all. Suddenly he ain't there no more. Another brother comes by
the house. Now he ain't there no more. Very few people have
gone all the way through this thing on both sides. You know, the
church thing and the Civil Rights thing, and then the personal,
and then all the way straight through with him. That shows you
how important his family is. Even though it is better out there
in the country and they go their different places, they always
supported him. Not when they was at the meetings every week but
people come home and not have to go through a lot of verbage and
all that garbage. Our church, like I say, he had just about total
support there. With whatever mess he and my mother might have
had, he always had her in his corner. It was about arguments
that you might have on a personal basis. But when you leave,
you're together. When you look down the road, you're together.
Like the decision to corne up North, he bent for that. He really
wanted to stay there. He just needed for her to be in it, for us
to be loud about staying. None of that happened. Nobody said
anything. Because whenever the two of them were around there was
an unusual situation. Like I said before it was not usual to
have both of them there in any case and at any time. So that was
sort of strange.
79
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: Just one more question. Did you ever see your
father depressed or down.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Hell, yes. Oftentimes. Like I say, the
point is, when this brother is depressed, he ain't like me. When
I 'm depressed, I stop and just let things go for a minute. When
he's depressed, he might say and he might just sit there looking
like this. But you got to do what you got to do . That is where
the point of admiration comes in from me. Like I say, you say
"The hell with it. " This guy always tries to live up to what he
is saying. He makes a l ot of mistakes, once again but you have
got to admire a brother who ' s got that drive to get things done.
Because not only his personal thing is going at that moment.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Can you name some points, events, that led him
to be depressed?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No , I couldn't do that but I am just saying
this is in retrospect. I always thought he had a headache but
now I can see -- we had a problem in church once where -- I heard
him talk about this afterwards. But when I saw it at the time he
just looked strange to me. One of his deacons had a son who was
doing something. Everybody knew about it but myoId man . When
myoId man found out about it, he told the man "You know, that
really ain't cool." The boy didn't mind the comment but the
boy's daddy did. It got to the point where the boy's daddy , who
was a very influential person in the community and the church .
He wanted his son to be just like him and he wasn't going to take
80
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
some new preacher -- this was early when we got to Birmingham .
He wasn ' t going to take this preacher bugging his son about
anything . His son was above reproach, as I was to my mother.
ANDREW M. MANIS; This was in Birmingham?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : Right, in Bethel [Baptist Church}. And some
way or another in the church service , this brother made a comment
to myoId man in the pulpit. MyoId man said "Now we ain ' t gonna
have this . " I didn't understand what the problem was. As far as
I can see, this guy don't like the preaching and the comments my
old man makes. Now, I can see in that time, that period of time,
his bewilderment in his face, why was this guy, who was supposed
to be on his side and one of his deacons doing this. He was
doing the right thing. He knew he was doing the right thing. He
was concerned about why this brother was going through all these
changes. As I got older I realized there was a lot more to it
than that. It had to do with this guy's personal life. I saw
him worrying about the situation with Deacon Davis at Bethel. I
don't know what the situation exactly was but it had to do with
Deacon Davis and his son. When they named that street for him,
Davis was younger, was on the program. He is on the County
Commission right now and he talks about myoId man like he was
the second corning? His old man has passed I think . I'm not
sure. But for a while the relationship was real cool with the
deacon . Everybody loves everybody but the Davises don '

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

This material may be protected under Title 17 of the U. S. Copyright Law which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research.

Holding.Institution

Birmingham Public Library (Alabama)

Full Text

FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
This is an interview with Mr. Fred L. Shuttlesworth , Jr ., son of
Civil Rights leader and minister , Fred Shut tlesworth , Sr . This
interview was conducted on January 13 , 1989 , by Andrew M. Manis
and was conducted at the home of Mr. Shut t l esworth.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Mr. Shuttl esworth , can you give me some
essential background on yourself.
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH : I am a school t eacher at Cincinnati High . I
attended the University of Cincinnati . I have a Masters in
religion and a bachelor ' s in educati on. I am d i vorced and got a
son and two daughters. I have lived here since 1961 and I went
to Parker High School and Carver High School in Birmi ngham,
Alabama. I have been teaching now since about 1971 .
ANDREW M. MANIS: You were born in Selma?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I was born in Mobile .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Are there any stories about your birth that are
interesting? I mean I had one about mine and one about my
daughter's. What about , any stories
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: The things -- I don't remember my being born
or my sisters being born . The first things I remember were when
I was about three or four years old .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any stories that your parents
or your family tol d about the births of your sisters or yourself .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Pat was born in a situation -- when my folks
were marri ed they were a young poor couple . Right? MyoI d man
was driving a truck, preaching. My mother was going to school ,
1
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
what they called supply, studying to be a substitute. At the
point when we were born they weren't doing too well. The
earliest childhood memory I have is down in Montgomery. Ricky
and Pat and I were together -- Carol, I think, would have been
born about that time -- and the house caught on fire. Bad
memories. I guess we were staying at a place that wasn't so
nice, but you heard about it and it was just living -- I always
had many memories of that. Selma, we lived in Selma when myoId
man was going to seminary school and preaching. I remember that.
Like I say myoId man was the disciplinarian in the family. My
mother was the one who, you know, I think in most families -- I
remember getting in trouble. I had myoId man chase me out of
the house. He had to get his retribution right then. It seems
like he had more of it at the time. I think he chased me around
a city block.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember what you did?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Nothin'. No, it was like not living up to
your responsibilities. You're supposed to do this and you're
supposed to do that. If you don't, you get your butt kicked or
something. After you get it kicked, it ain't held over you, your
reputation ain't shot forever but it is before your peer group.
You get punished for what you do. I'm sure it had to do with
having a fight with my sisters or telling them something that
wasn't supposed to be told or just typical kid stuff. It was
just the fact that we got punished often and I guess this
2
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
particular day I wasn ' t in the mood for it and decided to take
off .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did your father have any particular rules that
you had to abide by?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Basically, I ' m a boy. I got three sisters .
You can ' t hit the girls. You can abuse them verbally and not too
bad at that but you can ' t hit them and you got to do your little
chores .
ANDREW M. MANIS: What were your chores?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Taking out trash, cleaning up , this and
that. Simple stuff. It was just a matter of everybody's trying
to run in a gang -- you don't want to do yours and you want her
to do part of yours and you want her to do yours and you do hers
tomorrow, that kind of stuff . Of course, I wasn ' t old enough to
manipulate anybody so it was just a matter of, is my stuff clean
or not at the proper time. Most of the time there would be a
hassle. But , you know , better you have to do it so you just go
on . We were kept in the house. Before the Civil Rights
movement , it wasn ' t just the Civil Rights movement that kept us
in the house . It was just the way we were . You could go in the
yard and you could go up the street "as far as, " and it wasn't
about doing things different than that. At one point I think we
were in Birmingham , I couldn ' t have been more than eleven or
twelve years old , but going to elementary school I had stayed
over at my aunt ' s house, my mother's aunt, on the West side of
3
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
town. I cut school for a day , sat out in the park and wat ched
the day go by , watched the peopl e go through the park, didn't do
anything with anybody else or anything. But I went home too
earl y . So my aunt looked at me real crazy and when my mother
and father got home I got my butt kicked. She took me home and I
got my butt kicked over there and got laughed at for about a
year. Everybody going back and forth about cutting class , you
shoulda , woulda , coulda. At l east you got the day off but you
paid for it. I was with a lot of folks where entertainment was
like goi ng back and forth with your people , joking and just
talking. Course I always read a l ot when I was a k i d . That's
what moved me into being an English teacher right now . I a l ways
enjoyed the time I spent just reading, sports and whatever . And
so , we had a close family connection with my mother's aunt who
lived in West End , Mrs . Morris , and her husband , and my cousin,
Julia Range and Ollie Range. That describes my memories right
there. My father's mother , out in Oxmoor , if it didn ' t happen in
Oxmoor and it didn't happen i n the West End , you know, or
Collegeville, that is where I was a kid, it probably didn 't
happen. It wasn't in focus for me . We were close . Just kids
with no responsibilities except to do your best to respect folks.
Not see i ng a who l e l ot because we didn't go no place. The games
and stuff. I d i dn 't start going to football games until I was in
junior high school and high. No later, but no earlier than
anybody else because it just wasn 't like us to go a whole lot of
4
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
places. We would just basically watch each other. From the
earliest time I can remember myoId man was gone , and it wasn't
the Civil Rights movement I remember in the community, things
happened, I 'm sure you've been down there. The churches -- well ,
at the park -- in that direction there ' s two or three
neighborhoods and in this direction was really our neighborhood.
We used to be up there always fighting where the railroad tracks
ran into Huntsville Road. This one guy had his throat cut and
all that. MyoId man gets in the car and I just happened to get
in with him . I didn ' t ask him and we just rode up. And for a
young person to get out of the car and see your old man telling
people what to do , consoling the boy's family and talking to them
about , you know, life and death at the same time . You are
talking about day to day stuff. You go to church and this and
that. Do you do so and so. Where you work at? Man sittin '
there bleedin ' right? People are upset. Somebody wants to
fight. Somebody wants to do this and that . This guy has
leadership potential, you know. It was not a negative thing ; it
was just a given. The minister has the power in these Black
communities. I understood that before I understood exactly what
else he did . I had seen on so many occasions when somebody
comes to him and asks him in a polite way or a forceful way,
whatever, and there wasn ' t nothing controversial about it. It
was just a given , that this guy had a lot of authority and
influence from somewhere and so it took him away with what he was
5
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
with us. He had a real good sense of humor. He was always joking
and stuff and relating the latest stories about who did what .
The churches was a montage of people who were unique characters,
we had the [undistinguishable] types, including us, and so
preachers kids had to go through their line. You know folks
always got their comments about the good and bad. We had special
folks in the community who would try to make things comfortable
for us.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Can you remember who they were or some specific
things they did to help you?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: It basically had to do with the fact that
you've got to go to church three times every Sunday. So the time
in between you would like to have a nice time. They would take
us over to their houses, Mrs. Donald, like I said, my cousin,
Julia, Mrs. Billups, Mrs. Funderburke, a bunch of ladies, Mrs.
Clark. Mrs. Clark lost her husband when I was around eleven or
twelve years. She never got married even to this day .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Lucille Clark?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Right, you met her. Let ' s see, her family,
Mrs. Chappel, a lady who was her cousin I think . Chappels and
Clarks were probably as close to my family as other parts of my
family members. Its just church thing. You know some folks you
worship with because you share the same religion and some you
worship with because you love them. These were like our real
family people and we weren't with them all the time but they were
6
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
always there. There was Mr. Revis, right next door, Mr.
Robinson, all these just good nice folks, hard-working
individuals. Ain't nobody trying to do nothing slick.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any particular things they did
to minister to your family.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, we were always either by ourselves or
having to go through some special circumstance. You know, extra
guests coming in and they would take the slack. They would cook
and bring it over. We got some free time or something happening
at the church and we didn't necessarily want to be there. Let
the kids come over here and play with her nieces and nephews.
Everybody got nieces and nephews. When they would do something
with their kids, they would take us along or whatever. It was
just a thing. These folks were like, . specific stuff, where
they would take up slack for him but that didn't come up until
later with the Civil Rights Movement, when Mr. Revis renovated
his house front and back and all these folks gave up all their
time. Back then, being a minister's family, folks are always
looking to do things for you. It was almost a commonplace or a
given, you know. Most of the stuff that went on in my family, I
must admit, I was not aware of it until I got older or was told
of it. But, whenever anything had to be done in the house, or
around the house, in the community, somehow or another it just
went through our household. The church was there, and the
parsonage was right next to it. School couldn't have been but
7
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
one, two , three, four blocks away. We had a closed society and
even in that little foursquare block , I didn ' t get to see all of
it. I only got to see certain parts . Basically it had to do
with these folks taking us into their houses and just letting us
be entertained by their families or to give my mother some slack
or to kill the time between church services . We always
worshipped with the same people and then once the movement got
going it was about just taking off some of the pressure , you
know , trying to have a good time , laughing and joking about the
situation rather than getting all tense and up tight about it.
But in certain instances , I was just a little bit too young .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Sure.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: To really know who was pulling all these
strings.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about your grandparents? On both , well ,
your mother's side?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't have grandparents on my mother ' s
side. Mr. and Mrs. Morris were her devoted grandparents to me.
When they had the march on Washington we all went to her house. I
remember that. When Daddy tried to integrate Phillips [High
School] and whatever that was where he got chained, and my mother
stabbed , her husband had taken me over to Julia ' s house and we
went to school from Ju l ia ' s house. He ' d pick us up at Julia ' s
and drive us back home. This was a guy who was really , he was
dressed like an entertainer , a preacher or an entertainer , in a
8
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Black community would be dressed. He worked for the railroad but
he also had an interest in a funeral home. He had one of these
cars for the family. Right? With seats set up in the middle.
And this was the thing -- our family was over to his house -- we
showed up there to keep the car clean so it would look good. He
would drive us back and forth . He was a spectacularly nice guy.
As a couple, they would go like through years at a time the only
disagreement they might have would be about what they were going
to have for dinner. The trouble he might come raising his voice
when he might say "Gosh , Blanks , Dale - her name was Adele." He
wouldn ' t say it like most folks, he would say, "Gosh, blanks,
Dale, do you have to turn t he TV up so loud? Do you have to fix
the steaks this way?" Nothing this guy did was too much of a
demand to be normal . He got home at 3:30. This was a classic
Ozzie and Harriet situation. They didn't have no kids . My
mother, who she always thought was a spoiled brat , brings her
kids over. She ' d be glad to give you the All American raising and
let you see how he treats her. You know, have his supper ready
when he gets home and have the house clean and just , you know,
get along. It was never to her anything but straight ahead
together .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did they get along with your father?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Evidently they got along fine with him. That
was unusual to me because myoId man didn't get along with
everybody all the time . But these were older people I am sure
9
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
when he was courtin ' my mother . He had to go through them and
so, yeah, they got along great. My aunt, now, she is a very
quiet demure person. If she had a criticism she would make it
softl y and off to the side and if you didn 't agree , just go
ahead . My uncle, on the other hand, whatever you did was fine
with him. He had Colonel Johnson , I am sure you have interviewed
him or talked to him.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Not yet .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : Strong Johnson. He worked on the railroad
and he was one of the strongest supporters myoId man had in the
Civil Ri ghts movement . He was his body guard . He'd watch the
house outsi de. Carl Johnson . And I am sure you know who I am
tal king about . They called him Buck Johnson . Buck was a real
good friend of Uncle Josh. Augustus Ulas William ?? Morris ,
licensed as A. U. Morris , and his wife's name was Adele and they
made the perfect classic couple. To have a car and to have a
nice little house, decent part of the city. This was our idyllic
i n Birmingham. There were many blighted parts of the city . But
theirs was a nice part. From what I understand he and Buck
worked together. However it came about , he and Buck together, he
came to know myoI d man through my Uncle Josh . I am sure it was
his wife and children . And so all this time support that he was
getting , financial, moral support or whatever. This is what my
Unc l e Josh was responsible for. But back at that time I had no
idea then. Unc l e Josh came home and played with us , do whatever.
10
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
He split. I never saw him and myoId man sit down and talkin'
about this situation. It just never occurred to me but the older
I got I realized that if it hadn't been for Uncle Josh, myoId
man would not even have known Buck. I don't know but that is the
way it looked to me. I used to see Buck come over to Uncle
Josh's house fixing things and doing this and that for auntie,
way before daddy was deep in all this Civil Rights stuff. So I
had to assume that that friendship held onto this other real
strong support. That's just one example. Everything is like net
worth in some way or another. It might not be formal but it is
certainly informal.
ANDREW M. MANIS: How do you think your mother's aunt and uncle,
these people whom you have been talking about, how do you think
they influenced your mother? They reared her.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: As far as I know they raised her. The family
was very small and she went to school to get a strong sense of
herself, pride, dignity and all this. Where we lived, the
ghetto, it wasn't beneath her. She was constantly trying to
brighten it up. You understand what I am saying. Just like this
matriarch of the family in the Black community. I used to think
it was overdone but actually it is not. We just don't give
enough credit to the meaning. We spend so much time throwing
blame we hardly ever give credit. She was just another Black
lady trying to make it. But definitely the fact that myoId man
came from Oxmoor and the fact that she was from the West side of
11
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
town whe r e folks had a little bit better
ANDREW M. MANIS: Are you talking about your mother or your
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: My aunt ' s father and my aunt and uncle , I had
no idea where he came up. As far as I was concerned he was born ,
raised and died at 824 Washington Avenue. You know Birmingham is
a block over from Wylam.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I just wasn ' t clear whether you were talking
about Aunt Adele or your mother just then , when you were talking
about trying to brighten up your home or
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH : Mrs, Morris , all her interest seemed to be
right in the house extended to sending us to church, taking us to
Sunday School, and so forth , and keeping her family going. My
mother seemed to be able to see a little bit further than that.
She had a littl e bit more education , a little bit more
assertiveness , a l i ttle bit more outspoken, a lot more outspoken ,
and so what auntie would not like something and keep it to
herself for a long time. Might make a little comment, but my
mother woul d say it right there , not in a nasty way but, you
know, straight up , honestly and go on. And if it carne up again
she ' d say it again . And so oftentimes she would criticize her
for being outspoken , she'd criticize her for wanting to work in
real nice stuff. But what is the point of not wearing nice stuff
is what I used to always wonder . When her husband would dress
real sharp and she is not giving any thought about dressing at
all. It never bothered her. When she got ready to go to church,
12
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
she'd dress too, but she didn't go as much as he did, so it was
one of those things. How do you dress signifies something? Like
I said, in the Black community, seeing myoId man's suit, seeing
my uncle in his suit and tie going to a job, that kind of
influenced me to say, "Hey, the signs have to be there in order
for you to get your influence or whatever." In the Black
community more than others, it seems like that means more than it
really should sometimes. You know. [Indistinguishable.} My
mother got a lot of criticism from her for wanting us to have
this and that, maybe something we did not necessarily need. But
you know, when you're raising kids you always have the second
generation say you shouldn't give them quite so much but in times
of love and affection they gave us 200%.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about your father's mother.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: We would get a month at grandmother's every
year and we would get a month at auntie's every year and in
between we would have weekends or days, or whatever, wherever we
needed to be.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me ask you this. How do you think your
grandmother influenced your father? In what ways was your father
influenced by his mother?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I'm sure she introduced him to the spiritual
side of his mentality. He wouldn't have it if it hadn't been for
her. He gives her credit for that. But at the same time, before
you saw her in the spiritual sense, you saw her in a very strong
13
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
physical sense. She was a very strong woman. I am sure you know
now she is sick and holding on and this and that. The average
person would have passed fifteen years ago with all the stuff
she's got. She has this nature, she has this spirit that is
just, the word is indomitable, I guess. She is going to get her
point across and she is going to do this and she is going to do
that. I know this much about my grandmother. I know that, and I
can get in her, her aura seems to go around the whole area of her
house. You know the things you get close to, you look and see
what has she done, like there was the matriarchal system and it
is the finest, best, worst, whatever. She had a husband, Mr.
Jesse, her third husband I believe. He was just like a part of
backdrop for her. Not that she was being oppressive, not that
she was being anything, just being herself which was assertive
and over at her house she did the butt kicking. And Mr. Jesse
might make a comment and go ahead on. He was a real meek guy,
who talked soft and this and that and any day of the week, any
time, you might see her with a baby in one hand and a switch in
the other, whippin' somebody's butt, talking about this and that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: This Mr. Jesse you mentioned, is not your
father's stepfather.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No, I never knew my father's side. I can't
say anything about that. I don't know who was who. But he was
in the house with us. I remember whenever I used to go over
there Mr. Jesse was there. His stepfather might have been the
14
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1(13(89
second husband . I don ' t know. I never asked anybody . My
memories of grandmother were that Mr. Jesse was with her. He
might be able to tell you what relation he has with him. But ,
like I say, he was just there, you know, nice guy. He likes me
and al l that but my grandmother's crazy about me , as she is about
the other fifteen or twenty that she ' s got running around. But
that does not mean that on the slightest drop of the hat , you'd
crack the wrong line she ' d wouldn't smack you up between two or
three trees on your back . MyoId man don't kick butts no better
than she do .
ANDREW M. MANIS : So she ' s
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: She is a strong country woman.
ANDREW M. MANIS: So she was very much disciplinarian?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : And outspoken. Not necessarily contentious .
She just moved too many battles.
ANDREW M. MANIS: No doubt your father took after his mother.
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Exactly! So the way I have ever had to
pursue his father in terms of asking about him, I just listen to
what he says. This is his influence . He looks like her , he
talks like her. He has all of her mannerisms. Like I said , he
has a diffent worldview than she has simply because of his
experiences outside. If a Black woman could have done anything in
life, his mamma could have done anything in life had she gotten
out of Oxmoor on that hill . The strength that she used to do
what she did was awesome . It really was.
15
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: I'm certain to ask your father this directly
but 1 111 ask you since I am thinking about it. What is your
father ' s view of the role of woman, the equality of women to men?
Is he a traditionalist with regard to male- female roles?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Traditionalist I guess is a good enough term.
In the church you got to deal with the scriptures that talk about
that. In day to day living he wants his wife to be, you know, in
the house. My mother wanted to work. He wants, you know, the
classic Ozzie and Harriet thing and when you get down to it, it
was true. I was married and I wanted my wife to work because we
needed the money. Right? They did too , but he wouldn't admit
it. So, you know, if you are not a traditionalist , or if you are
a traditionalist , you are asking for problems, you know that .
The fact that she was kind of, she liked to dress well, this and
that , all that did not necessarily help his relationship with
her. It is kind of obvious he is a real traditionalist.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Are there any stories, just sort of a treasury
of stories that you remember hearing family members tell about
your father when he was a boy?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : Well, when his family gets together he is
just one among ten . You know, they were always aware of what he
is doing. Most of the stuff that relates to him, that he has
told me and that I have heard, relates to groups of him and Uncle
Gene . From what I understand they used to run together . Uncle
Clifton was the baby under them. So just like Pat and Ricky
16
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
would take advantage of me, he and Uncle Gene would take
advantage of Clifton. When it came up to going out with girls,
when it came to getting money from the parents, whatever. This
was the pecking order. Evidently it has not changed. Even in
their old age when they make a joke, the joke is about him. When
they make a joke and laugh it is almost like clockwork. But they
got a sister named Cleo who is either between daddy and Uncle
Gene or whatever . She has a very strong forceful personality
too. She has not moved off of that hill in Oxmoor next to her
mother.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I know, I talked with her two weeks ago.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: r im saying and I am sure you could see some
of this where, you know, had I had been on the hill I could have
done that. Or I don ' t know what that thing is with that family,
but like I say , there was a bunch of them. Most of the stories
have to do with how they went down here and got in this kind of
trouble and lied on this one and get out. You know, the same kind
of stuff. But I couldn't relate to them because I didn't know the
characters they were using. But the pecking order was him and
Uncle Gene ran and Uncle Clifton. All of his brothers and
sisters were not blood, you know, full blooded. And so there
ain't too much happening in terms of good relationships with
these sisters here and this one sister, I could see more there.
Once again, I have been to all their houses. I know all their
kids in a superficial way from a distance. Close up, there is
17
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
just not a strong continuous thing . When we were over at
grandma ' s house , what I am trying to say to you , for that two
weeks, different folks ' kids might be there. He's got nine
brothers and sisters and we might be over there with Uncle Gene's
kids were there one year. The next year we might be over there
with Aunt Shane ' s kids from out of town . The ones who were
constantly there were Robert Lee and his sisters. Frankly
speaking , I have no idea how they were related to them at all.
But I know they were related because they were re l ated to
grandma. So , I know them better than I know some of my own
cousins . It wasn ' t about daddy , it was about grandma and who ' s
talking to who . Her kids were always -- one of them would try to
live there and then go back to mamma ' s house . There was always
about this sad , I don't want to say soap operas. Course it was
always about their personal lives between the folks in the family
right there a t that moment. I never heard nobody talking in
Oxmoor talking about the Civil Rights movement. I never heard
nobody in the West End talk about anything but compliments from
myoId man. By the same token , these are upper middle class
folks here. Country folks here . And country folks are mainly
concerned with what they are living with day to day. They read
the paper and watch TV but once again what ' s happening wi th us i s
more important, and we can't influence that no way. That seems
to be a part of what he has to deal with when he goes there. He
is not ah -- I am sure that is one of the few places he can
18
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
relax . He ain't got to be the minister and this and that. You
know, he's Fred who became a minister and that makes a lot of
difference in terms of letting your hair down or whatever .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I ' ll ask you again. Can you remember any
stories that they tell about your father?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Not really. Him working on these jobs, they
tease him about how hard he had to scuffle to get together with
my mother . That ' s the deal. You ' re out here in the country.
She was a little ole low class girl . You are trying to get this
little low class girl. That ' s where the teasing came from. Like
they used to run with him and my uncle chose a girl from in the
city and my Uncle Clifton chose a lady from in the city. All of
them did. Nobody married country girls, but they tease each
other about the girl they chose and the way they went about it.
Like I said, these are funky stories. It doesn't bear repeating
except about how you were embarrassed and do so and so and that
kind of stuff. They didn ' t tell stories just about him. They
told them about the whole group and how they reacted to things
that happened. Like I said, when I am down there I just in a
crowd and grandma is the spoke in the middle of the wheel and
everybody else just goes out. It is a totally different world
than anyplace else .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any stories your grandmother or
your father told about her disciplining your father?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Grandmamma was legendary in terms of her
19
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
discipline . She had these serious "Go get me a stick. and rack
lem up" or the ironing cord , and this and that . See, he ' s tough.
He don't want to cry when he gets whipped, so he ' d get whipped
extra. The rest of us didn't have no qualms with that . We would
put out the tears as soon as it got started . But he wanted to be
tough and grandma had to really work on him because over a period
of time a boy don ' t want no lady telling him what to do . It's as
simple as that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Tell me a little bit more about your mother.
Were there any ways that you think that she influenced your
father?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, when it was time to come up here to
Cincinnati in 1961 and go on to the end he sat her down in a
chair. This had been going on for quite some time I am sure but
this day it was presented to us. That there was an opportunity
in Cincinnati to live. How do you feel about it? He was always
somebody who wanted to stay in Birmingham. And I am sure had
there been any part of her that wanted to stay in Birmingham at
that time , the whole family would have stayed. Like I said , she
got us up here. I am sure that is the reason we are a live today.
I am sure that in retrospect he knows that is what he needed to
do at that time . Three kids going to college . You ain1t making
enough money to send one down there . If you come up here you
could get some help and you could look at it more realistically
because , like the money situation down there was stupid . It had
20
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
to be done economically. It had to be done psychologically. On
reflection, like I said, it was a meat grinder for everybody's
mentality, every day this pressure of this and that. We couldn't
have lived down there very much longer I am sure. Yet, he didn't
necessarily want to do it.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did she think that moving to Cincinnati would
gradually get Fred out of Civil Rights?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That had not been proved at that point. SCLC
has been an umbrella of an organization means that the regular
terms just don't apply. If you are in SCLC and you're a board
member you go where SCLC goes, no matter where you live.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I just wonder if she felt that by being out of
Birmingham he would gradually disengage from the active •
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't know how she could have expected that
because .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was it primarily financial and getting out of
the pressure of Birmingham made her want to come to Cincinnati?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Specifically, one girl is going to be a
sophomore, one girl is going to be a freshman in college and I am
a high school senior. It's hard to just say it was specifically
economic or specifically this because, like I say, preachers move
all the time. And so, had he gotten another church, that he had
seen as he was evangelizing or whatever, it was kind of,
obviously, it was dangerous. It was kind of -- well, this was a
couple years before the march, but once again, his contribution
21
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1 / 13/89
had been good planning to everybody who was there and her thing
was simply you' l l be sharing the load with somebody else sure l y
even if you can ' t give it up and his thing was "Well , I am going
to do whatever I got to do." That just does not allow for good
feelings . For when you say , "1 am going to do whatever I got to
do ," you are basical ly saying "the hell with what you say. "
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, how do you think he fina l ly came around
and became convinced that it was acceptable to come to
Cincinnati?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Other people had been doing the same thing .
The other p l aces, the people he had been dealing with, they were
moving. King started out in Montgomery and went to Atlanta. I
know he was born there and a l l that, but still this is the way it
goes. You might get big here but you come back home and do this
and that. So really, he was the only one who hadn ' t gone
somewhere and come back. By the time we moved, I 'm sure, his
constituents on that l evel , I 'm not talking about King , I am
talking about C. K. Steele, who went to New York , this one guy
went to Florida . They had all started moving to different
places. The only ones who did not from where I can see with just
my own experience, were ones who were in the upper echelons of
SCLC or the same as King who was born there and he just went back
home. There were a l ot of people I am sure who have left there
now who moved up here about thi s time. In the second place his
brother moved up here before he did . Uncle Gene was up here
22
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
worki ng and teaching and this and that . My mother was a teacher.
It was easy to make the move then whereas it wouldn't have been
before . Uncle Gene might have influenced him as much as my
mamma. Or the three of them collectively . Uncle Gene ' s wife was
about like auntie . Very supportive , very quiet, and yet she
worked . She just retired from teaching. She had a full career
and t h i s and that. You don ' t have to be assertive, as a woman to
make a mark. But you do have to be vocal. She was a very quiet
person. You never would know what she thought until you asked
her a specific question. On the other hand , Uncle Gene, daddy
and my mother were vocal people. Trying to discuss things with
each other . Not tha t i t was our decision at all but when you add
all that up the wonder is why he hadn ' t done it before. He
never said " I have been bombed twice, the threats were always
there. " My sisters and I had that thing up in Gadsden , Alabama .
ANDREW M. MANIS : Yeah , I am going to ask you about that l ater .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: There were so many instances . The
handwriting was on the wall in a mural type dictation. Just no
way around it, it was time to go. To my knowledge, the day we
got to the table , that was the first I hear d of that , and the
next thing I know , Ollie was driving us up to see Cincinnati .
There was my mother in the house, myoId man stil l down there
going back and forth. New life . Cincinnati , as cold as hell in
the mi ddle of summer . Those are my first memories of here . Like
23
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/ 13/89
I say, one day we were there and the next day we were here . When
you look back, there was no way we could have stayed there. The
church where he was, was very supportive of him. But you just
can't sustain effort over a l ong period of time without burning
out. And I'm sure his personal thing was, you know you can only
dip into the well so many times. I just didn't see him the same
way then that I see him now. I didn ' t see him as often or as
clearly .
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did you see him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: As a preacher. Now he is a man and a
preacher. Back then he was just a preacher because when folks
related to me it was about how's the preacher. It wasn ' t how is
your daddy. It was about how ' s the preacher. That's all right,
you know how it is, it saves you from having to think a lot of
times . Just go with the flow of what you know they're gonna
think . His thing with me was always like he's there and he ' s got
the power to do this and that and the question i s how is he going
to do it . But he ' s always going to do it. He is a lways going to
say what he is supposed to say. He ' s a lways going to back you
up. He is a lways going to let you know you ' re wrong , too. Once
I got hurt and I had to go to the hospital . He had told me and
Ricky to stay in the house the same as he always told us every
day to stay in the house. So we was on the fringes of the time.
We were definitely in the wrong place. Because we could see that
blue car which he had at that time coming so we were rushing back
24
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
to the house I cracked my head wide open on a brick on a thing .
I go to the hosp i tal and he comes to visit me and he tells me ,
"I'm glad to see you are all right , but as soon as you get out of
here I am going to kick your butt because you were in the wrong
place at the wrong time . " In the very next voice he would tell
me , "now are you sure you don't want some ice cream?" or
somethi ng like that . Thi s cat was always going to let you know,
"1 1m doing my job . I am looking to see right and wrong in you . "
The question is how are you going to react to that. It is not
about what he is going to do. But I was just shocked that he
tempered me . But with this other thing about concern " I 'm gonna
buy you some ice c r eam, too" -- he also let me know I had
something coming for being in the wrong place.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Was he the kind of father who outwardly
demonstrated affection to his children?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , like I say, there is only so much that
can go a r ound. There are four of us in the house . He ain ' t got
time to be affecti onat e with a l l four of t hese kids . He didn ' t
have time to play romper room . This brother would be doing this,
that , and the other. You know, he ld come and pat you on the head
every once in a while or hug or kiss you or whatever but mostly
it was about getting your butt kicked . You might get petted and
this and that , but be quiet and let him sleep. Everything had to
revolve around him because , like I said , for a lot of different
reasons , he had to be the focus on a lot of folks ' attention.
25
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1(13(89
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you find he was different from other
fathers that you observed?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: A l ot of fathers were , probabl y a lot of
fathers weren 't there.
ANDREW M. MANIS: The ones who were?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : The ones who were there he was more outspoken
than some of them but he didn't have no monopol y on any of those
characteristics in the homes I went into. Like I say, Uncle Josh
was the undisputed leader of his household no matter who was in
it at any time without being loud but certainly it was very
obvious. In grandma ' s house there was a central thing of
authority . So , no , it wasn ' t no different at our house as
anybody elses . It was j ust a preacher ' s house and when folks came
in there was always , you know, the complimentary fashion. Nobody
came to our house to start trouble at any point. The men, there
were very few men around there who didn ' t try to have total
control of their homes . Those who did not I wouldn ' t have been
aware of them .
ANDREW M. MANIS: In terms of how these fathers and your father
related to their chil dren
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well , Mr . Revis, right next door, the guy who
gave up his house, he ran a cleaners out in back and he worked at
U. S . Pipe , hard work, doing this stuff . He had his sons, he
tried to drive his sons to do exactly what he did . He drove them
away. Their old man was a driver too. But, like I say at that
26
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
poi nt in time I was so young , I wasn ' t going no where no way. It
was just a matter of maintaining what I had -- so I missed a lot
of the authority that Pat and Ri cky would have had to deal with.
No "Can I?" "No! " No d i scussion, no this, no that. "Will we?"
"No! " I didn 't get too much of that because I wasn 't requiring
that much at that time. But he was not atypical among the men
that I knew. Mr . Robinson, James Robinson, the fellow you heard
on the program, the last one that when they named the street [for
Shuttlesworth], who had large program, this guy that spoke, his
father was basi cally the same way . You try as much as you can to
make a young black boy aware that he is going to have a row to
hoe out here . And the only way he can do it is to be real
strong. I don 't know if it was a blessing or a curse. I saw his
other brothers who were just two or three years older than I am
and going through a l l this hell. I wasn ' t going through
nothing . I was just old enough to be aware. You see , I skipped
over a couple of grades in school so I went to school the first
two years of my, I was around people who I could understand you
could just see stuff and just mark it down and go ahead. I could
see these young men struggling to be independent . But I didn ' t
have no need for independence. It was always about just what I
am going to do. It was dull as hell, I ' ll give you that . It
gives you time to learn things vicariously . Where you ain ' t got
to beat your head against that wall to figure out that that wall
is strong. You saw somebody else beat their head against the
27
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
wall. Like I say, naivete was basically my characteristic
through this whole
ANDREW M. MANIS: Tell me about your experience of being the
preacher's kid or one of the preacher's kids.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, the low point, kids were allowed to
play ball in between old houses. When you play among the
fellows, you get a chance to be a man. Well it was nothing
unusual to go somewhere and have folks know you and you don't
know who they are. This was that kind of situation. We had been
playing ball a block over from where I lived, playing football
and we were cursing up a storm basically. "The hell with you"
and this and that. Every opportunity where you could put a curse
word between, we are going to do that. I was loud at this time
with a whole bunch of other guys. But when the older people
finally got tired of this, nobody's name came up but mine.
Because I was the one everybody knew. Two of them brothers lived
on the street. Nobody said nothin ' about them. It was all about
me and my nasty mouth. Needless to say it was one of those
opportunities to demonstrate to the people that his son wasn't no
different than nobody else's and, Yeah, I heard about it, and
this and that and this and that and he had to pay the price for
this . But you get used to that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did he do?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: He talked about it from the pulpit. He
thanked the lady. He kicked my butt. He kept me in the house for
28
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
a week. By this point, except for the fact that I really didn't
think or consider that these folks knew who I was, I was just
totally free to do my stuff, my little low life, low class self
with my friends. I didn't have the opportunity.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me ask you this. Your father is capable of
expressing himself vividly and with a profane word here and
there. What were the limits here?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: You mean in terms with language for young
kids?
ANDREW M. MANIS: Yeah!
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well he wasn't like Atticus in "To Kill a
Mockingbird" when Scout said "Pass the damn ham." If I had done
that, myoId man would have reached across the table and went
like that [a slap]. Everybody knows what you can and cannot say.
Nothing around grown people. So if you want to take the liberty
to do that be prepared to pay the full consequences. Now the
kids in the area, my sisters' boyfriends would come over and out
in front of the house they would be macho. It ain't nothing for
him to holler out, "That's enough." Occasionally they would make
a remark and leave but they always left. Not myoId man, but
just anybody. It was almost kind of dictative. All your life
you were taught how to respect grown people, how to respect
women. You knew if you had anything unusual you were going to
have to suffer for it.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, I guess that gets back to the question I
29
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
asked earlier about what were some of the basic, if you could
just list a handful of some of the basic rules that your parents
put on all of you.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: You got to be responsible for doing your
thing. If you help somebody else do their thing and don't get
yours done , it's on you. It isn't on them, it's on you. You got
to work hard in school. If you ain't as bright as this person,
that's nice. It's always about whose the brightest. It turns
out the baby was the brightest of all of us. But nobody knew it
at the time. At one point they thought I was the brightest. But
I was getting skipped over school. When we was in Birmingham I
was the brightest but when we came over here I lost about twenty
I.Q. points because Carol became so much brighter as time went
on. But that is not the issue. The issue was do your best. The
issue then was if you are not doing your best you were cheating
yourself and wasting everybody ' s -- you know that commercial lithe
mind is a terrible thing to waste" -- this was exemplified as
opposed to sit down at the table like the Cosby folks do and just
say "1'11 kick your so and so if you bring another one of them in
here." That is telling me in so many words you must work hard in
school. It wasn't like Huxtables. It was more like when you
didn't live up to what you were to live up to, all hell broke
loose. It might be your mother swinging on you. It might be
your father but whoever, you got the message. Some things you
could slack. If I did something and it wasn't serious he
30
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1(13(89
wouldn ' t even hear about that. My mother wouldn ' t pass that on.
Whatever it was , he went off. If it was good, he would go off
profusely. Praised you like you just cure cancer. On the hand ,
if you did something minute , you got your butt kicked because he
is such an up tight person . Wound up. But that don ' t mean he
wasn't relaxing because I saw him relax often. He was just a
happy go l ucky brother. He ' s losing that. He ' s tired now . That
is one of the t hings he had to sacrifice .
ANDREW M. MANIS : What did he do to relax?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Sit around the house and joke. Reverend Lane
would come over to the house and play checkers . In the house. I
don ' t know what he did outside. But, in the house , just having
folks over . Carrying on a conversation . He and my mother never
drank or smoked so it wasn ' t about partyi ng and things like that.
But people were always coming by . It wasn ' t nothi n ' for him to
entertain everybody with stories about when he was a young
preacher , how he learned how to handle situations. Held call me,
"June, come out here and tell them how you so and so and so ."
He and my mother didn 't think nothin ' about -- like a church
program . When you call somebody up, "be ye also ready. Come here
and tell these folks what you know about so and so. Come here ,
Jim, this is my boy."
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any of those specifically, when
he asked you do somethi ng?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: What have you been doing in school lately?
31
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Come over here and cite your averages. Show you know this
particular bit of thing that we discussed. I was well read so I
could give points -- I was always good on sports. He liked
sports but he couldn ' t follow them as well as I could , even at
that point in time. It would be about "This little boy , he is
going to be so and so and 50 •• 1 All I had to do was sit there and
bask in this and go right on . But everybody gives you that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you enjoy -- this gets back to the issue of
being a preacher's son -- preacher's kid -- did you enjoy going
to church?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No , I didn 1t enjoy it all but it was
unavoidable.
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did you deal with that?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That was a situation , the situation you asked
about the values , I got away from that. The values that you
always do this and that . One value is that when it is time to do
a certain thing , whatever the circumstances are, you just go
ahead and do that. It is always about you living up to your
responsibilities. If it is time to go to church and you ain't
got your thing ready, you just ain ' t ready. There is another
situation where I left my shoes at school . All I had in the
house were gym shoes . Sunday morning , I said, "Hey , I can ' t go
to church in those gym shoes ." That is what I told my sister .
The word got to my mamma . She says , "Now , you know you 're not
preaching, you ' re just sittin up there and so and so and so and
32
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
so." I said "Oh, my dear, I just, I just, I just." Finally he
hears about it. (Emulates crying). I'm sitting there crying but
I got my gym shoes on and I am in church.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Before you get
on, what did he do?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: He said, "If you don ' t get your ass up there
I going to slap the shit out of you." That I s what he said. NOw,
had I wanted, I could have just waited and carne in and did that.
That's your option, you can sit there and take the punishment and
do what he tells you to do or you can just go on and do it. It
wasn't about like on TV where the kids "Well, so and so, no."
You either took that butt kicking or you went on and did what you
had to do anyway.
ANDREW M. MANIS:
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH:
It doesn't matter how strongly you felt.
Did you ever cut up in church?
I ' d cut up if there were no adults around.
Any adult would be enough of an authority figure to tell me to
shut up in church. And when he got in the pulpit, the thing was,
everybody , adults and kids, had to listen to what he says. It
wasn't no big deal to listen to what he said in the church
environment. But at horne it was like life and death, man. You
might seriously consider whether or not you were going to make it
through the next confrontation you had with the belt or whatever
it was. To illustrate it, it didn't corne up to me too clearly
then, but at the time all I could see was, if I'm not prepared do
my little lecture and I don't have this little bit, I better do
33
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
the hell out of this because my job i s to be there and I want to
present myself in this fashion. When you got folks looking for
you , you got to show up. Another situation, he showed us where
his responsibility was to get everybody together . In that
cont ext, me and Ricky and Pat and Carol had to get in line like
everybody else. We had a bus trip going somewhere. There was
like six seats available for seven people . The issue was who's
gonna ride and who ' s not gonna ride? Who's gonna go later , who ' s
gonna go now? He takes us out and put somebody else on to
demonstrate , nOh, don't worry about so and so. " My mother got
very upset at that." And so, it ' s nice to make a point. But
lets not make a poi nt every time all the time this time . I got
the message right away there. It just showed how oftentimes his
purposes were at cross purposes with hers.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was that sort of thing something that he did
often and that often created
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, it didn ' t come up that often. That the
way we had to expect it to go. It was a point of pride to him,
like in every preacher ' s kid ' s mentality you know you're going to
be the butt of a joke, so accept it gracefully, then you can get
through it. If you're gonna take it hard it will be hard. And I
am the kind of person all my life just go with the flow. While
you didn't like it, once you got there , you go with the flow and
have a nice time , the folks are there to help you . They're real
nice folks. Not the most exciting thi ng in the world but, once
34
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
again, this is it. He showed us that when you are working at this
level you do have to -- or what I learned was not necessarily
what he wanted to show me. What he showed me was that "you just
don't count" purpose. What he showed me was I got a family and
got another consideration and I just make sure I dealt with both
at the same time. Oftentimes he just didn't have time for that.
Somebody else was doing the knitty gritty nuts and bolts
operation. He just did the overall thing so really he didn't
have control of that particular thing but he could say "Let's
just take two older kids -- let's take my kids." That shows the
mentality you always have .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Were there any regular family rituals or
traditions that you all did maybe once a week, or once a month,
or was there any particular way you celebrated Christmas?
Anything that was regular like that?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Nothing out of the ordinary. Like I say,
church was always first and foremost. Almost everything we did
was regulated by what was happening in the church until the
summer time when it was about what's happening at grandma ' s house
or what's happening at auntie's house. There was a different
kind of atmosphere for us.
ANDREW M. MANIS: So you just went and lived with your grandma
for a month?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Two or three weeks or a month out of the
summer. Or any weekend that was necessary.
35
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did your parents do?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: God only knows. Maybe travel.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Like a vacation?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, yeah.
ANDREW M. MANIS: All four of you would go at the same time?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Ricky and I were comfortable everywhere.
Pat's not comfortable in Oxmoor. Pat's not comfortable in West
End either, that's on account of Julia's house. Julia lost a
daughter Pat's age. They had this little bond between them.
That's always where Pat wants to be. Carol was so young she
didn't really care. Me and Ricky went anyplace to be
comfortable, but, you know, we had a different kind of atmosphere
here and here and here. But, you know, go with the flow or
standing there and dealing with it every second through is always
the choice of people gotta make.
ANDREW M. MANIS: When did it become clear to you that your
father was unusual among Black ministers?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Among ministers, much later. I gave every
minister the attributes I gave him for the longest time. I
assumed all ministers got out in the streets with their people.
I assumed that all ministers would stop what he is doing here to
deal with this issue here. This is an important issue. I
thought all ministers dealt with the socio-economic side of their
peoples' lives as opposed to just to spiritual. Then I found out
that wasn't true and after, let me see, the time -- I guess that
36
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
would be here in Cincinnati. Down there it was my experience that
all these ministers was coming to do all this stuff together.
Now, I didn't see the ministers who were not there. I would see
the criticism in the newspapers, the Black newspapers about what
some of the ministers said. All I could see was a straight up
"We got to do this," "Let's get together, let's do this, let's
get this done I let's make this call, let IS rai se this money,"
from the folks who were energetic about getting things done. But
when I got up here at that time, 1961, I was like fifteen going
on sixteen, getting ready to get out of school the next year.
For a while it didn't make the same impression. As I said, the
summer of 1963 I was down there. They had the march and I saw it
on TV. At the same time in 1958 I guess it was when they
integrated Phillips [High] School, that must have been it, the
first time I ever saw him on tv he's been beaten with these
chains. I COUldn't relate to that. I said, "Why?" At the same
time we were looking at the fan mail, he is sitting right here,
like I'm sittin' here, you know, we made the bedroom into a
sickroom. He just pulled me over and patted my head and gave me
a kiss and said "Yeah, I'm all right, don't worry about it."
Then he started to laugh the way we are doing here now. I
realized that, no, he was not like all the rest of these
ministers.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I guess I am interested in knowing what it was
like living under the pressure of, I mean, you were something
37
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
like, oh • •
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I was born in 1946. When the house got
bombed I was eleven.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Okay, you were six or seven when you first got
to Birmingham I suppose it was. Three years later you were ten
or eleven. What was it like, the pressure, the telephone calls?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: In the first place it meant that whenever you
talked on the phone, you knew somebody was listening. I had to
learn that lesson. By talking to some friends of mine. I was
trying to get to know this little girl and somebody would come
and tell me about this conversation later. Not only would my
parents pick up on the phone whenever they wanted to, but the
phone was tapped. These folks called they had to be tapped so
they would act like they were trying to trace these folks
threatening us every day. When we would answer the phone
expecting to hear from Gerald, it was some guy cussing you out.
That works on your mind but when you block stuff out, you're not
really living a real life. You go through the motions but, one
time I was back after the summer. I guess it was about 1964. I
was up at Miss Clark's house. You know how far it is from where
I lived, two and a half blocks. All of a sudden there was this
light in my eyes and a pistol right in front of that. Who are
you and where are you going? A store had been robbed around the
corner. When I told them my name then, he got out of my face in
about forty seconds and went on about his business.
38
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
"Shuttlesworth" meant "leave him the hell alone" at that point.
If that had happened say 1961 before we left I might not be here
to tell you about it now . That time a name helped me get out of
some mess , that I didn 't have no business in no way , but I always
recognized it could have been a lot worse. I got friends whose
daddies had interaction with white folks and got cut up, got
fired , got this, got that. As far as I knew, myoId man was the
only Negro down there who could get things open against the white
people. He was like a comic strip character to me in a lot of
ways . Superman. Batman. It was how a kid looks at things.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Was there ever a time when you or one of your
sisters wanted to know what the hell was going on? Why were you
living under such tension?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: My mother explained it best with this phrase,
"Daddy's got a lot on his mind ." "Daddy's working on something
larger than what we can see right here." We had met King. Pat
knew him. She went over to his house on campus, Spellman's
campus . I had only seen him a couple of times. Daddy rode down
to Montgomery once and put me in the car. While him and King was
in the office , me and one of King ' s kids , I don ' t know who it was
were outside running around the church. I remember Montgomery
for that reason only. I lived there while I was a kid. But that
is all I remember about it, just that one little two or three
hour visit , then right back up here. He came to Birmingham but
everybody always talked about "the movement." Everybody always
39
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
talked about this white thing and so without even saying that you
know that whatever happens, you got backup. A lot of Black folks
couldn ' t say that. So I have always had the concept of whatever
I do, somebody's gonna come and check it out and see what's
happenin ' with me . I know a lot of folks that didn ' t have that.
The folks who didn't go to church . The folks whose family
structure wasn't as close. Now I didn't know this at the time,
but looking back, I can see we have always been more
conservative . I would have accepted the situation where somebody
else might not . I could look for that. I had a best friend
named Jerald whose father got killed on the job. They didn ' t
give him a damn thing for that . His mother is working right now .
Simply because U. S. Pipe didn ' t give a damn about these brothers
carrying all this heavy, much too heavy, I'm sure hernia
anybody on that job had a hernia. But once again he was working
like dogs in all this heat with all this dangerous equipment.
You get hurt on the job , nobody gave a damn. Mr. Revis, right
next door, lost part of his foot. There was nothing you could do
about it. I am surprised , in looking back, that dad didn't do
something with the labor group. He didn't get to that evidently.
Having backup makes a difference. It was one thing to have to go
and fight Mike Tyson, but if you got two or three folks with you ,
it won't be quite so bad .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was there ever a time when you , well, where
your mother or father explained the facts of Black life,
40
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
explained what racism was all about.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I had so many people tell me that. A lot of
them were simply running back to me what myoId man had said to
them. In a group setting he gives the philosophy of the
Movement. I get that through Buck, that guy I mentioned before.
lId get that through Julia, who spent as much time with us with
anybody but my mother. Through my aunt, or my uncle, sitting on
the porch. While I'm reading the sports section he is unwinding
from the day. He was explaining to me why auntie wouldn't let me
do something . It was dangerous out in the streets after a
certain time. Black folks and white folks. Everybody was
telling me this. It wasn't about no mother, father. The comment
he would make was if you ain't here at a certain time, I'll kick
your so-and-so. I understood why automatically because I heard
so many folks talking about it so many times. But because church
took so much time, a lot of what I know about myoId man, I know
because of folks telling me.
ANDREW M. MANIS: A lot of these things are not surprising to me,
I suppose, but it seems ironic to me because I remember growing
up in Birmingham and there was, but where our parents were very
often fearful about what Blacks might do in the streets at night,
or what have you, obviously racist stereotypes • • •
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: We were more afraid of what the police would
do to a Black person as opposed to what a Black person might do.
ANDREW M. MANIS: It strikes me as ironic, too, that while our
41
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
parents were telling us that it was dangerous to be out at night
your parents were telling you the same thing.
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Exactly , but for slightly different reasons .
You know , Emmett Till and a l l that stuff happening , this s t uff is
documented. Every t i me Pat would say she wanted to do something
or Ricky wanted to do something , auntie would say, "We l l , I read
j ust the other day a little boy got caught over in Wyl am and they
ain ' t seen him since. " Or, " some l ittle boy got caught by a car
on Lomb Avenue , and you can' t do that . " The answer was a l ways
"No!" The question is what kind of excuse are you going to get
for it. But I ' ve gotten that from so many different places . My
old man didn ' t have to tell me too much because there were so
many people he knew and had dealings with had already given me
his story. While he was in Cleveland , while he was in Atlanta,
while he was in wherever. My uncle , Ollie, my cousin, the oldest
fellows , who teased me about being the preacher ' s kid, at the
same time , look o u t for you like I was their l ittle brother.
Because they were trying to talk to my sisters too. I 'm gett ing
it from al l these d i ffe r ent directions . Then I go to school
where my mother was a substitute teacher. MyoId man did that
for a whil e too when he wasn ' t doing other things. They would
always pull me aside and do things for me that they don ' t do for
other folks. Many times making comments, " I 'm sorry to hear your
old man got beat up in f r ont of the school , we ' re with him. " I
would never pass that on because I would never get in the
42
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
situation , in the place to say, "Ms. So- and- So said to tell you
so and SO. " He knew this in general. The support that I was
getting was that everybody knew my situation. Some of them
understood it a lot better than I did, so they would go out of
their way to make my situation something I could deal with, is
what I am trying to say.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Can you give me some examples of the toll that
your father l s Civil Rights activities took on the family?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well we had this this car and at the part
where the NAACP got outlawed, his group got outlawed immediately
afterwards and they sued him and when they go to court, the
technique is to get put in jail, go to court, why you have to go
to court , you gotta get bailed. You get bailed out you got to
sign a note. All of this brother's property got taken one year.
That was part of our problem, the fact that he would go out and
speak and he is making money, he turns that money over to the
church and the Movement . He would go out of his way to make sure
it didn't look like he was taking these folks money. He would
dress himself like a country boy. He wasn ' t that flashy no way .
Folks expect the preacher to be driving a Cadillac so he
purposely buys a Chevrolet . That is right now what he drives.
He could drive what he wants to drive. He chooses to carry this
level of whatever it is. That was always a thing with me. If
there is anything negative about the whole thing with me and
Ricky and Pat, that is what you could write in a very
43
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
straightforward fashion. He would sacrifice his own personal
family's financial situation, not on a long term basis but on a
regular basis. This was one thing that was regular. It was
never about making money. It was about doing it for the cause
because it's right, etc. Now the first time I realized that
Martin Luther King wore silk suits, it got to be a bug in my
craw. Do you understand what I am saying? It is possible to
look good and still speak the truth. It is possible to take care
of your family and still save the world. I don't understand why
he couldn't see that. So that got to be a hassle with me. But
who gives a damn if things are going this way. You're a fifteen,
sixteen year old kid. It don't mean nothin'. But that was just
the negative side of our whole frame, it couldn't be emphasis
because the emphasis was, "Man, this brother's really on the
money." Folks were so proud of him. How are you not going to be
proud of someone everybody else in the whole Black community is
proud of? Like I say, the negative comments didn't get to me.
A fellow might say that, "yeah, so-and-so said your daddy was so­and-
so, Man" but they wouldn't say it to me. They might say it
behind my back or whatever. My friends would come and tell me so
I would get the negative stuff like that second hand which is the
best way to get it?
ANDREW W. MANIS: What kind of negative stuff did you get?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: These people would say, "Your old man ought
to leave these white folks alone before he get hisself and all of
44
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
us killed. " Or the kind of thing like "that troublemaking
preacher over there don ' t know that folks just want to be
preached to , they don't want to be carried out in the streets . "
That kind of stuff , stereo typical stuff that you would expect
looking back . But at that time, I didn ' t know how to take it one
way or the other. I didn ' t really understand what the hell was
-- how this thing worked . You know, it is easy to say now you
publicize a situation and then you get some help both financially
and morally. Then you try to bring in the government. This had
never been done before. So a lot of them I am sure didn't
understand . I don ' t fee l bad about not understanding it myself
at fourteen . Yeah, the negative comments came intermittently.
Most of the time it was more like "Hey, I hope your old man can
make it. " Or guys on the street would be jokin ' and jivin' and
they ' d say, "Yeah, it's a good thing you got the Lord on your
s i de or these white folks would just so and so and so. " But most
of the t i me it was about guys using their sense of humor like
your friend i n the hospital would make light of a situation that
was real serious. This guy could be shot any day. They knew
they could blow the building or come out and blow your house up.
When they blew the house up everybody was in it. He was in this
bed and the thing came down right next to him. Everybody was over
at our house. They ' d say it was a miracle that he didn ' t get
hurt, it was a miracle nobody got hurt.
ANDREW M. MANIS: That was going to be my next question. Tell me
45
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
-- narrate that story for me from your point of view.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: This was Christmas night. I am playing with
my new football suit. It was red, white stripes with a helmet.
I had the whole thing ready, laid out. What was I -- a twelve
year old kid . I had my little football suit on, still going
through the excitement of the day . Everybody is fussing at me to
put my stuff up. Thi s guy named Robison who lives up at the
other end of the street, was down there. One of the deacons of
the church was there telling daddy, I am sure, about the receipts
in church that Sunday, who he got to visit and this and that. My
mother was in the back cleaning up. The girls were going about.
The tree is here. The living room and dining room, he is in the
bedroom with this guy . I am in the dining room admiring the tree
and myself. The girls are cleaning up and putting the toys away.
All of a sudden there was this BOOM I The lights go out . Damn,
its dark, its dusty, can't nobody see nothin ' . Next thing I see
myoId man putting on his shirt and tie . Ricky ' s asking "Where ' s
daddy, where ' s so-and-so?" Nobody didn't know how to scream. It
was about talking. You didn't need to make too much noise . It
was totally quiet . No noise happenin'. I could hear
conversation there, there and there . It was about puttin'
everybody in one place seeing if anybody was cut up. You could
feel the glass and dust going past your face , but nobody got a
scratch. It was a miracle that the bomb was put on the side
where his room was for some reason. That side of the house was
46
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
just down. He just got up out of the bed. Got dressed because
he knew the folks was coming. He had to be ready when they came.
When they took the pictures, he was there with his shirt and tie.
Five minutes before he was layin' up in the bed talking about
church and this and that. All of a sudden there was three or
four hundred people out in front. They were hollering and
screaming. The lights, the police, the fire department and all
my friends and their mamas and daddies who all lived ten minutes
away, at the very most, they were lookin' to see how you was,
giving you a hug and a kiss, and getting ready to go to Julia's
house for a safe haven. Then for the next year we stayed at Mrs.
Morris's house. That thing having to drive from the West Side to
the North Side, go to school, come back, get carried home. From
that time it wasn't about goin' no where. Being the preacher's
kid, being young, looking at girls, just starting to date.
Wasn't nobody goin' too many places no way. Right? Now all of a
sudden you ain't going no where. Everybody enjoying your friends
because that's about as much as you're going to do. We couldn't
go out in public too much, except to go to these meetings, the
mass meetings where everybody was at.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You always went to those?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No, I didn't have to go to those because if
there was a planning thing, nobody had to go, just the leaders.
But on Monday nights, every Monday they went to the big meetings
and I went to about two thirds of them. If you're in school you
47
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
can ' t be there until nine or ten o ' clock . But when the
demonst rat i ons were goi ng on , everybody goes. You ain't got to
be asked either , because all your friends are going . You meet
the little girls there. It was just a social thing for the kids
and a life and death thing for the grown folks , man. Then I
started t o see -- I guess when you asked t hat question when did I
know he was different f r om normal . Then you could begin to sort
out that everybody ain ' t quite as strong as they say they are in
their support. Like I say , when the bomb dropped , then all of a
sudden folks started looking at this thing a little bit
different . Some folks there "Yeah , it ' s about time somebody took
up aga i nst those whi te f o l ks ." That ' s what some of them said.
They dropped that bomb , man , then they came back and bombed it
again three months later , four months later by the church and a
lot of folks , "Oh , no. Why don ' t you get the hell out of the
neighborhood? " This was the ghetto anyway . You ' ve been down
t here . I t is just here l ately that the streets got paved. These
folks don ' t need all that commotion.
ANDREW M. MANIS: The s t reets weren't paved at that time?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Hell, no. This was ghetto. I didn ' t realize
how much lower class we were living on until Unc l e Gene , who
lived on the South Si de , Si xth Avenue and Center Street . The
folks over there had these beautiful houses. We had mostly
houses shot gun . We had a nice big house. parsonages are always
decent. It wasn ' t about economics . It was just about what his
48
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
position was . He was the brokest preacher in the world . That
was t he onl y resentment I had for this whol e thing and that was a
personal thing . That wasn ' t the movement. I didn't have no
problem with him doin ' t hat because he was just readin l the
Bible. The Bible will tell you to do that . You can understand
that totally. But I can ' t understand -- the Bible does not say
deny yourself basics . If my mother present ed him a situati on
where he got four kids , you ' re making this much money. He asked
us to do so- and- so. That can be a problem. Why he ' s trying to
be altruistic , why you trying to make this point? I 'm trying to
get to school the next day in some shoes that hurt. Ricky tried
to do this wi th a dress t hat don ' t fi t . That ' s bull crap .
That ' s just a personal attitude . He was aware of that . Once
again , he chose to do it that way. Once again, coming from where
he ' s coming from I can see that. There ain ' t no way I can
criticize him . I 'm just telling you how I felt at that moment.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I got a couple more key events in his career
that I want to ask about from your point of view, what you
observed , how you felt when these things happened. One of these,
of course , is something that happened to you. We will get to it
in due course?
What were your thoughts or impressions about the September 1957
attack at Phillips [High School] ?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Like I said , I did not know that was going to
happen. I wasn ' t on the plan because I wasn ' t going. Ricky and
49
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Pat knew about it because they were going. In fact I teach a
story in my eighth grade class about a little Black girl going to
integrate school, and how she reacted. I didn't have no action.
I didn't have no knowledge of it until it actually happened. I
went to the house and all these people, two or three white folks,
which was totally unreal at that time. It was the first time I
had ever seen white folks in my house.
ANDREW M. MANIS: First of all, where were you when they drove up
at 10:00 or so that morning?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I was in school. That's what I'm sayin' see.
They had not gone to our school to try to integrate this one. I
went to mine. Got out at the regular time. Walked home. Here
were all these people. I found out a couple of them were
reporters later. White folks and Black folks, oh no, we don't
have that. We don't have that in the community, let alone the
house. I hope you ask about that mother's day mass because that
was the next time they had all those guys and they were all
grossed out like these movies you see. At this point in time,
that is when he got to be larger than life to me. If I had seen
him out there dealing with the brother who was cut on the street
telling everybody what to do and making this brother comfortable
and asking about church and doing all this at once. But now, he
is laid out. Bruises, cuts. His attitude is "Hey, we'll be back
in it." Ain't this nice to the guys on TV. Blows me away. He
is not concerned about the fact that he's damn near dead. He is
50
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
concerned about the fact that they got the publicity. I said,
"Well, damn, do it take all this?" But at the same time because
of the preparation, not that somebody sit down and say, "now this
is going to happen." Not Black coaching, but the attitude that
spirituality brings to you. You been through all this. You
don't know about it but that's got to work out too because that
is just the way things go for people who make it for one reason
or another. I've never been in the position where I didn't see
something I could do in terms of
"It's time to steal sornebody's .
"Wow,
"
it's time to drop out."
No, it wasn't about that.
It's always when I would go and ask for help. I might be
embarrassed to ask. I might not feel comfortable about asking
because I'll burn the bridge that I shouldn't have, but it was
always on me. I've had some of the most supportive people in the
world through him and my mother. That's the whole thing, I have
to keep going back to that. All my memories are clouded and
filtered through all these folks who "Now, your daddy's not
feeling too good, when you go in there • • " Lot of brothers
outside tell me that. I get it was how my sister say "Daddy's
broke up." You have to go back to the house prepared for him to
be sick. Somebody else has already told me. " Yeah, they're
trying to integrate the schools . . " But when I walk in the
house and see him, it's strange, it's bizarre, but once again,
that just escalates his influence as far as I can see. I said,
"Damn, he lived through that." just like the rest of them. I'm
51
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
just in awe .
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about your mother? How did she respond to
that event? I know that she was stabbed .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Like I said, she was very sweet lady but one
who had gumption to say what she thought. MyoId man did all
this and that "my kids last.1I She'd say "Why?" That would lead
to a ltercations in the house but it would blow over because she
let it blow over .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I mean her response to the Phillips High School
situation?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Her response was . .
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did she feel about it afterwards? Isn't
that the first time she experienced personally any violence?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, you got to remember, the preacher ' s
wife gets verbal abuse by being a preacher's wife. "She thinks
she ' s better than other folks. " I got those comments more than
the ones I got about him. Before we get to this thing about what
she is doing. So it is always about her being misinterpreted and
misunderstood. When he said "Take us off the bus." She said
"Put us back on the bus. " Somebody said, "Hey, she gonna put her
kid up above mine?" So , once again , if I 'm gonna choose between
one of them, I'm gonna choose my mamma . Because she is
supporting me whil e he i s doing this and that. His thing is
"this" and her thing is "me." So , the way I'm looking at it his
thing is crazy. I can see the point . I can see the value. Go
52
FRED L . SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
ahead with that because l i fe got to go on. Her thing is just
what you expect . Afterwards , it was like "Hey , you know it ' s
time to start thinking about letting somebody else spread this."
But I'm fourteen years old . She ain't discussing this with me.
I am talking about what I hear in arguments. I am talking about
what I hear , the comments she makes to her friends. The comments
that he makes from the pulpit. "Now you know what my wife says ."
That is the way myoId man deals with things. Everybody knows
everybody's business . Ain't no thing to him. That's why I
wouldn't tell him I had surgery until it was time. Because he ' d
tell everybody else . "You going to go in the hospital?" I would
have t o talk to everybody. Everybody ' s going to hear from here
to California before it happens . That just brings up emotional
problems to worry about. Anyway , her thing was , you need to
consider your personal self first. That is typical. That is
what anybody would expect .
ANDREW M. MANIS: She had some ongoing health probl ems resulting
from that stab wound, didn ' t she?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: High blood pressure . She always had that and
like I said , the emotional problems that we were dealing with
were multiplied with her. She worried about her husband and four
kids and herself, besides watching this guy go out here and do
this and that. She tried to raise her kids and trying to support
them, make sure they had what they ought to have to make go
through life . Then she wants to express herself as a woman. She
53
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
wants to open up a little day care center for some kids. "That's
not a good idea, you need to be home taking care of these kids. "
No, he wouldn ' t give her no money. So she wanted to go make some
money. She was being creative with a problem. Right? That
creates more problems. You know, the stereotypical things about
the male and female relationship. Sit in the house and be the
mamma. Like I say, when a young teenager starts to think for
himself, I said , "What is this brother's problem that he couldn't
see her point of view on anything?" But, you know, personal
relationships, you don ' t value comments as you should, because
they all become part of the piece. This is the going to be the
way she is going to react and I know it so I 'm just going to have
a hard line. Her line was just as hard . She is the advocate and
he had to have things proven to him. All she's got to do is hear
about it and she i s going to take care of . They are both
supporting me . I can't complain either way, but I empathize , I
sympathize. In the next few years I would become verbal to her.
"Layoff. This is not good, My Dear, [the children ' s name for
their mother] . This not good~ we need to do so and so." He
says, "Well, no , you can ' t talk like that." In other words, if
I were going to cri ticize him it woul dn ' t be to his face , it
would be to my sisters and she would always hear and her t hing
was always to intercede and say now you know he ' s so-and- so .
When she was dealing with him, I got to hear her real attitude .
You talk to your kid about what ' s right and you respond on the
54
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
present basis of how you feel. He's verbal, she's verbal. We
got to hear quite a bit through that period of time. This is
what he sacrificed, a chance to come home and just be with your
family. He couldn't do that. He came in, we automatically
stopped talking to see if he was going to walk in the house and
fallout like he usually did. Be real quiet so he can get back
up and be Superman with these folks out here. That gets old.
Get old quick. So, when he wakes up, if he's in the mood, you
can have a good time around him but most of the time he's
snapping at you. When he leaves we're happy. We can go on back
to being ourselves. But when he comes in, you can just look at
him and see. After a while you get to know your parents
feelings. Some days, red flag. Yeah, that was the pressure,
that he couldn't come home and relax because her thing was to let
him be reminded that we could do a little bit more for our kids
and ourselves and his thing was "No, I don't even want to give
the impression that this was to help me." I still think that was
not the smartest point of view that he could have taken towards
that. There is no value in confronting him with it. This is in
response to your question.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What is your evaluation or your viewpoint
concerning your parents' divorce? I know this is getting into
personal stuff.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Hey, it's just plain old depressing. After I
took four or five deep breaths, I'm talking about I think this is
55
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
real stupid. I think you all should really think this through
again . This is real late in the game. I love both of you , but
both of you all are getting on my nerves . II That was the last I
had to say about it. At that point I stopped dealing with both
of them. I didn ' t want to act like I was supporting him over
her. And I didn 't want to just leave her hanging. At the same
time my two s i sters , Ricky and Pat , whatever it was she was
doing, they were right there. My thing has always been made easy
in the sense that I ain 't got to do nothing. Someone else is
going to take care of it for me . I can come by twice a week and
see how my mother is doing. And right now I ain't gonna see
about what myoId man's doing because Pat and Ricky gonna see
about him , regardless . They knew his doctor schedules better
than he do . It's getting l ike that for me now. But it has
always made it easy for me to just go off to the side and have my
own feelings and thoughts and attitudes. In that case, I just
couldn't handle it. I couldn ' t deal with it. I thought it was a
very unfair situation but before anybody could deal with that
situation, the folks at church had already made up their minds.
Cut and dried . We talked about that before how the preacher ' s
kid is one thing and the preacher ' s wife is another. My mother
was getting tired of bei ng ster eotyped preacher's wife. You got
to look nice , not make a fool of herself. Don 't embarrass the
church. By that standard this lady is a 11 0% preacher ' s wife.
She was never appreciated for that. People want her to do what
56
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
he is doing. They want her to do this and that. I've always
felt, and this had nothing to do with him but it had to do with
this church thing. The preacher's kid is one thing. The
preacher's wife is another. That is a hell of a "Catch 22."
It's hard for you to do anything as a preacher's wife. Some of
the people who acted like they cared the most for her are
actually trying to get close to myoId man. If you tell him
about Revelation [Baptist Church] that lady, Autieve Smith, was
my mother's best friend. He's got his hands on the real thing
itself. To that extent I've always felt that she was the
underdog with whatever was going on. Whatever she chose to do
somebody was going to criticize her. Like I say, people ain't
gonna criticize myoId man to his face very often. They will get
into arguments with him and discuss. On the other hand, some
woman, they will talk to her any way. So, I saw her holding up
his interests, in every way you could imagine, tolerating, his
bad attitude coming in the house. And then lacking anything for
that. I'm talking about in terms of people just saying good
things about you. She was a very sweet woman. Not because she
was my mamma, but because she went out of her way to say nice
things to folks. And you know when you're a young person, what a
person says is not as important as how they say it. Like I say,
the support she gave me was the kind that when I went to school
in junior high, you asked me about being playful. I was a clown
all the time when I got to junior high because I am two years
57
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ahead of myself. I am with these older people, the only thing I
can do is clown, if I am not talking to some girl and not really
knowing where the conversation is going to lead anyway. Get in
there and laugh it off and go on with the fellows. Okay, when I
get in trouble he didn't have time to go up to the school with
me. She did. And when she came it was about "What are you all
doing to my baby?" In other words, there ain't nothing I could
do to make her feel that I was wrong. That kind of total support
is what mothers are for. I've got mine. I ain't gonna complain,
but at the same time when you go to dad you are going to have to
discuss with him where you were wrong first. Ain't nothing wrong
with that. But I'm just saying when you're growing up you got to
understand where a person is coming from. Now I can see his
point. That is the way I deal with my son. Talk to me first
about what happened. Then ask me for the money. Because it
might be that I don't want to give it to him because I don't
trust him. I can see now how that myoId man was dealing with me
in the same way I was dealing with mine. Evidently men don't
have that~ at least me and myoId man don't have that. But I saw
her get the short end of the stick in so many different instances
relating to the church, the movement and everything else. This
woman lived already under pressure, high blood, and this and that
and it's got to work on your mind. Looking back, I don't see how
in the hell she stood it all that time. There was one article in
the newspaper, I guess it was a Dayton paper or some kind of
58
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
paper where they had a thing on Caretta King and Ruby
Shuttlesworth, the two Civil Rights ministers' wives and what
life was like. If you don't have that, except at the church,
Ricky had it out for this program. I have never seen it in my
life until last year but that's the kind of thing that I am
trying to say here, somebody should have got up and -- somebody
should have given these ladies some special commendations .
Whatever Caretta Scott King do at this moment, she can't do
nothing bad in my mind. She always put up with more hell than
most people would in their lifetime , three or four. So, while at
least, King got to travel . At least he got to see the world. At
least he got the ego trip. What did she get? See what I am
saying? So all the criticisms and all the negativity, I saw that
corne down on her. I'm sure that Mrs. King is just as up tight as
whatever -- I don ' t know what she is taking, but if she ' s just
getting by on no medicati on , she is a hell of a woman. That was
rough, man. The violence, the tension, the violence, the tension
and while you 're trying to organize to try to get this together,
you ain't got no guarantees. So she stuck with him through all
that . I thought it was very unfair on his part. He's sittin '
here. He ' s runnin ' back and forth. What year was that? You got
the date? I don ' t even know, about
ANDREW M. MANIS: 1970?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Okay , by this time he ' s given up the thing.
He still travels back and forth every once in a while. I thought
59
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/13/89
that wasn ' t t o either one of t he i r advantage. And yet I can see
how i t would have been . If you were in the i r shoes you woul d
feel more intensely . I'm sittin ' here running off at the mouth .
I didn ' t go through what either one of them went through .
ANDREW M. MANIS; You might be guessing at this poi nt but from
your perspective , what woul d you think were the reasons they
f i nally decided to go ahead and get a divorce?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I have no idea. By that time , 1970 , you say?
By that time I had been married a couple of years.
ANDREW M. MANI S : I beli eve that's true. She died in 1 97 1 .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Right , t hey had been divorced a year . Okay.
Like I say , I had been married by that time . Start off just
going away from churc h and them. Like I say, this was leading up
to before it act ually happened. When peopl e separate you got a
mental problem . You got to support both of t hem. In the first
p l ace , I didn ' t know myoId man at that time. I tol d you that .
I know her . I can talk with her. I don ' t want to get up in her
face and say , "Yeah , you should have done thi s ten years ago ."
Or, "You shouldn ' t have done this at al l. " Whatever she does , I
have to accept that . It was so hard for me to verbalize , " I love
you, whatever you do , I 'm with you . II I did that , but once again ,
I didn ' t have a chance to do that wi th him. He was busy. He is
going here and there and so you wonder wi thin yoursel f how you
are going to be rece i ved by either one of them. Sometimes she
have her bad days. Don ' t tell me nothing about that. You can ' t
60
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
expect somebody to playa stereotypical role for you in reality
every day.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, I ask you this because my parents got a
divorce and for a long time all the blame in my mind was on my
father. But gradually I've begun to see that it took both. My
mother had some weaknesses as well that weakened the marriage.
So I'm wondering.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That's why I don't like to speculate on stuff
like that. I don't, I never got into either one of their
personal business to the point where I knew anything except who
their best friends were at that moment. In other words,whose
face I saw in the house most often. But the arguments were
always right there. They argued within the next room and they're
raising their voice, cussing and this and that, so hey, you get
to hear what you get to hear. All I can say is what I see. I
can't relate to what might have, could have and should have. All
I can see is this lady gave up a whole bunch of her life at the
same time he was giving his up and he suffered on a personal
basis and so did she. I could just see two people suffering. I
could see four kids who had always been like this. Whatever was
happening you could count on these folks being here. Lot of
other folks supporting too, but all of a sudden that was gone. I
got mad and moved myself away from that somewhat. My two older
sisters got mad. It was just a rocky point in time for me from a
lot of different directions. When you get married and you don't
61
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
have the economic situation that you'd like to have, you're
scuffling. And when you're scuffling, you ain't in nobody else's
personal problems, you're in your own. I think it was, hell, two
years later I was divorced. So it really didn't impact me as
much as it might have had I been by myself, or still in school at
that time. See, my youngest sister was still in school. That is
why I spend so much time with her now. At the time when she went
off, away from the family, like nobody has ever done, even when
Pat went, she was up the street from King and his family. She
dealt with them. She was by herself. So I started hanging with
her more so. While Ricky and I used to be tight when we was
kids, we still are, now it's me and Carolyn who talk together
about personal problems first and foremost. You know,
everybody's still close. Don't get me wrong. But at the point
where she went out and became a loner, more to herself. I was
like that myself. There was a point, well after they got
divorced I stopped going to church. The biggest thing with her,
"Why in the hell are you going to this church, as if you support
him, and all the folks dragging you around." Talking about how
you're wrong and everything else. I know this. I'm miserable.
I'm watching her and she just come in there and be herself. I
couldn't understand that. I haven't yet understood that. But
when people are going through their thing, nobody is supposed to
understand. I know that now. At that time it was just too
painful, so I just dropped away from it. I look back and I have
62
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
to rebuke myself. I should have been there doing what I could do
for both of them. I wasn't doin l nothin' for neither. I was
just going off by myself and feeling bad about the whole
situation. So many folks with so much energy and keeping them
two people together for various purposes, it was sad. They could
have broke up way back when the violence started happening. If
she wanted to live a little better life or work and this and
that. They almost got a divorce down in Birmingham, the way we
heard it. So they got through that . She got up here and it was
slack in comparison . But after you have gone through so much, a
little bit of weight breaks you down whereas before you could
have handled twice that, three times that.
ANDREW M. MANIS : The same problems you ' ve been talking about
were in effect .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No, no, I didn't say that. I am saying when
they got to Cincinnati I stopped knowing either one of them. I
went off to school in 1966 and stayed a year. I got married in
1969 and went off and that was it for me altogether. So we are
not talking about this familiarity like we had before. I just
know that they had been having problems . I was uncomfortable
around him all my life and now all of a sudden she's not around
to be a bridge to carry the messages back and forth and let me
know what he ' s thinkin' and l et him know what I'm thinkin' . Who
else gives a damn that much? You know what I'm sayin ' ? So the
need for us to communicate had been gone . Now we had to
63
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
communicate with each other.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Were your sisters uncomfortable around him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: As far as I know they'd never had an
uncomfortable moment in their life. They totally supported the
both of them the whole way through. At the time when they got
the divorce my two sisters were living two doors down the street
from myoId man. I used to cuss all of them out. rid say, "Why
in the hell are you licking this man's ass and he's doggin' your
mamma out every day?" Maybe they understood something I didn't
understand. Maybe they - I'm sure they were more mature. But
once again, all I could do was say what I could see. I was
trying to be honest with myself and them. I said, "You ought to
go do something else for my mamma. Here is this idiotic twenty
twenty-one year old telling his mamma what she ought to be doing.
You know just out of emotions. Nobody ever told me "Why don't
you shut the hell up?" My sisters, they just let me go on, and
if I had to level with you now, Ricky abused me at that point. I
was just upset with everybody. I was upset with them for not
helping them to get together, but it was beyond their control.
They knew that and they just tried to help both. So, as I say,
when my mother did pass now, all of a sudden we are back together
for the wrong reasons. I still didn't want to be bothered with
that. I went through at least a year's period, maybe a year and
a half or two, when I didn't even fool with church. I would go
to another church, maybe. But that one for sure, no. It just
64
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
wasn 't about me being abl e t o expr ess that at that moment. I got
over it. I grew up, but once again, it was a very painful thing
and I don't want to even conjecture about how it was but I do
know how it was back then. It was a hell of a scuffle f or both
of them. He's a brother . She ' s a bright sister. But Black
ladies COUldn't do what they can do now back then. There have
a lways been outs t anding Black women who were business people and
this and that, but if you 're a minister's wife, and you a in't the
Adam Clayton Powell ' s , up in New York in a whole differen t
situation , you ain 't gonna find too much happiness in the Deep
South in the ghetto. As I said , this is the dregs of society. I
know she had seen better than that. She was a college girl in
the fifties. There weren ' t that many Black college women.
Simply put, the numbers just weren't there. So she was blessed
in that area , but at the same time she was dealing with just day
to day things. And very well I thought. She was abl e to
function every l evel. I'm not saying she was high c lass and he
was l ow . I am saying how her people had more than his people
had, simply put . So you know the kind o f comments both families
are going to make . Realistically. And so we heard all those
comments. It kind o f pissed me off when early on that she would
get the nasty remarks for something he was doing . He said,
"Well, she don't do no better." He wouldn't a llow us t o do no
better. Who am I to stand up and say, "We ll, yeah , Aunt Cleo , so
and so ." Aunt Cleo would knock the hel l out of me; she knocked a
65
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
hole in the wall and left the stain on it."
ANDREW M. MANIS: I believe that.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah, that's a rough chick, myoId man's
sister. * [Some material not recorded; resumes with a question,
the Freedom Riders] the president or governor or somebody, was
making these long distance calls down. You probably know the
dates better than I do at this point.
ANDREW M. MANIS: It was 1961.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: May of 1961, Mother's Day. From the bus
station they cracked all these heads, burned the buses. They had
burned the buses earlier and they came into Birmingham and the
only place they would know to go was to our house. That was the
second time I saw white folks in our house. Well, whichever came
first, I can't recall now. It was all mixed together. But this
white guy was in there and his head was wide open. And for some
reason he was showing the scars to somebody so it was like Friday
the 13th, man, this brother was showing his scar or they was
lookin' at his head or something. I just happened to walk in ~
house and there was this white guy with his head all cracked
open. There were some Black folks over here all beat up. Some
of them were mad. Some of them were glad they were through with
it. But a lot of them just proud to be associated. Like I say,
all these emotions were always there to be seen. Any fool could
see if they were just paying attention. Because I wasn't old
enough to participate in the conversation, I could just look.
66
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
Out of all this confusion he was still the man in charge. Some
decisions had to be made as to whether we were going to continue
this and do it another way or do this or that. His thing was
always, IIAII right." If you make a mistake like that, it would
be just that bad, or just that good if you go ahead, So the
biggest thing is that I was impressed that these white folks were
in our house but nobody said nothin' about "Something bad is
gonna happen in a minute." Our plan was just a little bit
different than everybody else's thing. If you saw a white person
walking on 29th Avenue you would have to look around and see
what's gonna happen. But because daddy was in so much stuff
all the time it didn't quite upset me as much as it would have
ordinarily but it did add to the aura, when this guy is into
something real deep, real mystical, real spiritual, you might as
well just get out of the way and let him go. Ain't nothin' you
can do with him. I have never thought that could be duplicated in
our society. Right now somebody just like King with the same
fluency, the same charisma, they'd either laugh at him or kill
him immediately. Like I say, that was just a specific historical
occurrence I just can't see happening again. The Black folks
were the only ones who would tolerate the kind of abuse they had
to take back then. Even though you are fighting a spiritual war,
the things those brothers had to give up to get to that are just
awesome to me. I was looking at it up close in person.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Is there anything specific you can remember
67
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
about seeing, I assume it was Jim Peck.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Peck! Right , the name comes back .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you talk to him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh , no. I didn ' t talk to him. I was more
interested to know who the other folks were because I am checking
to see if my mom and dad i s in it. So Peck didn't matter to me.
I just wanted to go back and make sure he was there and she was
there. Then my thing i s goi ng back to my little every day hippy­dippy
life. I was l i ke ... who was it on TV? Beaverl I
didn't have no responsibilities. I wasn ' t in it. I worked out
of it. I could see it. It affected me and it was totally
unusual. My sisters were there and they saw this brother get
beat up. They saw his mom get stabbed. I didn ' t see that. I
heard about. You know , the after effects and this and that but
by the same token when we left I had never been in a
demonstration.
ANDREW M. MANIS : You had been arrested in Gadsden .
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: That was in 1960. That was after this camp
[Highlander Folk School] where we had had the experience of being
with white folks for the first time in my life on a regular
basis . White girls , oh my goodness. White girls , white boys ,
white men , white women. First time in my whole experience.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Before you get on with that story , what did you
think about your first experience of being with white peopl e?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: It was beautiful. I was young enough at that
68
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
time, it wasn't about nothin' but playing ball and acting like
you wanted to talk to the girls. I didn't want to talk to the
girls. What am I going to say? Once you get into it, once you
say "Hi, I'm so-and-so and you're so-and-so." What is the next
step? I didn't know at that time. Right? That was enough for
me to be popular and know everybody. We had to learn and we
basically got to know each other. Ray and me and you would be in
this camp. By the time this camp was over we'd know everybody's
life story. All day. Your whole purpose was to get to know each
other. Your whole purpose was to sing songs that make you come
out of yourself. Go out and play ball and be yourself. Sit down
and discuss the history of racial relations and talk about your
experience. By the time it was over, I knew where everybody
lived, how old they are, how much their family , it was a
totally unique situation. Somebody had a hell of a good idea in
doing this but I think it was about 30 or 40 kids, maybe more,
from allover, white and Black. For six weeks we had been
counselled to just get along and to know each other. The whole
purpose for what I could see was just
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any of those white kids?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Anne Kaufman, the one that I rode home with
on the bus before we transferred buses. A girl named April, a
Black guy named Charles from South Carolina. Had this geechy
accent. That Black boy with an accent, that was funny.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember any of the stories or anything
69
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
about these white kids that impressed you?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, what impressed me was that they was all
just like me. I thought they was gonna be something different.
This guy, Guy Carowan(?), have you ever heard of him? Guy was
deaf the whole way through. He was a folk singer. He does "This
Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land." Real uplifting
brother. The most embarrassing thing I ever did in my whole life
at Highlander, we were playing softball. Guy does something
goofy and I laughed at him. I feel bad about that till this day.
Guy was not the kind of person that even gave a damn about
softball. You talk with him out there playing with us. We knew
he was an all right guy. I got the wrong aspect about some of
the kids in class. You say something and they laugh for the
wrong reason. That hurts me to even think that I laughed at him
trying to help me feel comfortable. But he didnlt care. It
didnlt bother him at all. live met him since and he didnlt even
remember it. But he was there and everybody would sing these
songs, listen to him sing and then weld learn them. It really
gave me a chance to think about white folks as something other
than the enemy. Thatls the point. It broadened my perspective
more than anything else could have. I had decided I would not
have been able to enjoy this under any other circumstances but I
had both my sisters there with me. If I had been there by
myself, it probably would have took two weeks to get to know
anybody because 11m not the most outgoing person in the world.
70
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR. 1/ 13/89
But , having Ricky there , they meet somebody I know and it makes
it just that much easier. And the guy who was from South
Carolina , he had met everybody by hisself. Nobody had that break
but me. So after it was over we go on back home. Everybody
crying . Everybody got new type friend . Most of us neve r saw
each other again . Some of us wrote for a couple of years . But,
after we broke up i n , I guess, Nashville , to get the bus on down
home, the bus was crowded and no standing in front of this line.
"You all niggers move back to the back." The issue was suppose
to have been standing in front of the line . All of a sudden the
issue was "why are these guys so nasty to these little Black
kids?" And we were Black kids. So , the first chance we get to
stop .
ANDREW M. MANIS: There weren ' t any other Black kids on the bus?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don 't remember. All I remember is that, I
mean once again , me and my two sisters and everybody go for
themselves - - this was not a Highlander bus . After we got off
the Highlander bus and changed over, the whole atmosphere ' s
different. Just getting home now. All of a sudden we were
confronted by this guy . There was no place to go . We couldn ' t
move to the back. Them people didn't want us standing allover
them. It was crowded . So he really had no right to be nasty.
He went beyond that because of the way white folks deal with
Black folks. His dander was up . Our dander was up a little. We
said , "No , we ain ' t movi ng. We are gonna stay right. And let's
71
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/ 13/89
just go. Give us a seat and we ' ll sit down. " In other words , we
started mouthing at him as he was mouthing at us. So he stops i n
Gadsden and calls the pol ice. Police come and take me, Ricky and
Pat to the jail , put them up here and me right up under them .
This is like 6:00 , 7:00 , 8:00 at night . We get the one phone
call . We called myoI d man . We sit there and wait . I don't
know, I mean , you k now, you' re in the jail, man . There is no way
t o deal with that except .
ANDREW M. MANIS : You were 1 3 , right?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : This was 61. I was born in 46. I was 15 .
Getting ready for - - I was born it 46 , this is 60. Must have
been 14. Yeah! This is like you trap me and come back . This is
60 . I was 14 .
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did it feel being in jail?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: I t was dead. It was a deadening thing . But
if you got your people with you , it ain ' t quite as bad.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Anybody in the cell wi th you?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Nobody was in the cell with me . They were i n
the cell together. Nobody else but them were right there but
there were grown prisoners. This wasn ' t no juvenile detention
center . This was jail in Gadsden. We had just got out of
Highlander. It was about singing. We spent the night singi ng.
We sang all them Guy Carowan songs . We talked to each other
through the bars. I don ' t recall the man being ugl y about us
communicating wi th each other either .
72
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: What about the other people in the jail?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Like I said man, not backwards, straight
ahead. You know, you're scared to death. I didn't want to see
anybody next to me. He might reach up and snatch my little butt.
I'm small now but hell, I didn't grow until, what was it, 1962.
It was only in 1962 that I matured physically. I was out of high
school then. I couldn't run track, for example, until after I
was out of high school. I wasn't strong enough to train.
Anyway, this is how we spent the evening until myoId man finally
got there about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Then we heard this
loud talking and carrying on. The door was unlocked and we
walked out. At that moment, all that was past tense.
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did he say to you when he first saw you?
What do you say to him?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: I don't even recall, man. In the rush of all
of that when he showed up, he had about six or seven other people
with him that I saw. It would have been foolish for him to have
come any other way. Me and Rick and Pat came out. His first
thing is all this about "you all right?" That's always the way
it is going to be. He checked to make sure. He didn't take our
word for it. Spin you around. Look at you. If something had
been wrong he would have had something to go after these people
about. Once he knew everyone was all right he went about taking
care of the business and letting these people know this is bull
shit. Jailing these kids. It wasn't about no family reunion.
73
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
You know his roots were there. It was about "Give me my damn
kids and don ' t this no more . This ain ' t no way to do ." Like I
said, by the time it was over with , we were so tired and run down
from all this singi ng and all this tension and all the joy you
had at the camp and the sadness you had about breaking up. And
the tension about "Damn , this guy would really call the police on
us? " That was shocking . That was the most shocking th i ng that
this bus driver actually called the police for not standi ng
behind this line.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You didn ' t mention them choking you?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: It wasn ' t worth mentioning . When you ' re
dealing with white people you don ' t fight with them . This has
always been the thing , see , we walk in there and the guy wants to
butcher you He say now I want you t o do this and that and my
thing is to - - I 'm verbal by now . I ' ve been a quiet person but
by now I 'm verbal. Because I am fronting off . My two sisters
was there. I'm the only boy. He get me around the neck. I 'm the
man. My job is to be verbal and I said "I I m going to get you
so- and-so. " The guy t hrows me up against the wall like this.
That ' s the kind of thing that wasn't important , right. But the
deal was it either had to do with him putting all of us in the
same place, making a phone call . It might have had to do with
the way he was treating Ricky and Pat , you know. "Come here."
"Wait a minute, man (gestures choking)??" But when he did that
to me the two of them went to acting a fool. Then all of a
74
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH , JR . 1/13/89
sudden there was this big commotion with, cops don ' t have too
much commotion with Black kids in a Southern town in the middle
of the night. By now it was about 9:00 - 10:00, right . Me
getting choked was no big deal in the long term of getting the
hell out of that jail. This was life and death. That choking
didn't bother me at all. Matter of fact, when it was over and we
were back in Birmingham talking about it, Ricky says "and the man
choked you too. n I said "Oh! " That was the least of my concern .
First thing was like "Are we going to be okay in general? How we
gonna make it through thi s night. Then when our old man got
there, are they going to kill his ass right in front of us?" You
know what I 'm sayin ' ? It wasn't about just walking in and
walking out. They tried to provoke him.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you recall any comments to you about being
Shuttlesworth ' s kids?
MR . SHUTTLESWORTH: Yeah , the terms come to mind. But "jailbird"
was the word that was used either on the good side or the bad
side. The Blacks would say, "Yeah , that jailbird so-and- so . " Or
folks who don ' t like you. It was "yeah, that jailbird preacher's
kid . " The same thing just from whichever side they were taking
it. Folks don't make no long speeches that I remember ta l king to
me. There were comments like , "Hey , I was with your old man all
the time. I ain't been out there ." But they would explain to me
why . They would give me all this history and then just go on.
Somebody else would say , "Well , yeah, I ' ve always thought your
75
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
old man should do this and that and this and that." Like I'm his
agent or whatever. People used me as a sounding board to express
themselves. Like I said, most of the time it just went in one
ear and out the other. I found out real early that most of the
people that say they know myoId man don't know him at all. Even
in the church, way back, a guy would say "Yeah, your daddy said
he wants to do so-and-so." I can't tell you how many times
somebody told me myoId man said something and it was untrue.
See what 11m saying. They are just motivating me in the first
place that myoId man said, they think that by saying he said
this that it would get them over and they'd be successful. After
while, when they said myoId man said it would just make me do
opposite, just as a reaction. I outgrew that and just went on to
evaluate myself. But over and over again.. I'm in Disney
World with my baby. A guy walks up and says III met you at your
father's church.1I See what I'm sayin'? I'm just sittin' there
at the gate, right. Another person comes up out of the blue and
said III saw you at Greater New Light [Baptist Church]." He
shakes my hand and goes on. He could have just as easily have
come up and said "Yeah, your old man damn near got me killed."
I'm in the laundromat up here on Reading Road, six months ago. I
told you about this. A guy says IIYeah, I come from Birmingham.
Your sister killed this policeman down there. Bull Connor, I
think it was. Ran over him with a car. One of Shuttlesworth's
girls." I said, "Man, you're crazy. My sister wasn't even
76
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1(13(89
driving at that time." And yet he was so adamant I just stopped
talking to him because he knew that one of Reverend
Shuttlesworth's girls had run over a policeman and killed him.
They had to get out of town as a result. That is the kind of
bullshit I am telling you that people manufacture in their heads.
ANDREW M. MANIS: While you're on ??
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Oh, yeah. While we were there. He brought
this lie all the way up to Cincinnati. And just happened to hear
my name. I told this lady my name because we had gone to school
together, way back when. He said, "Yeah, I know you and your
daddy and all your people." I ain't never seen this guy before
in my life. Older people were even worse. "Yeah, me and your
daddy go back a long ways." They don't no more know him than the
man in the moon. You know what I'm saying?
ANDREW M. MANIS: What do you think are the most important ways
your father has changed over the years?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Well, the fact is, speaking of that, daddy's
slowed down. The only thing daddy's done is slow down. There is
a part of daddy that is always reaching to do something else.
You can see that. He's thinking ahead of things that's got to be
done. He really has not changed. He's just going a lot slower
than he used to. Hopefully the stuff that he has, well, like I
say, he hasn't never changed. It has always been hard for him to
relax. When he relaxes it almost seems like he is feeling guilty
77
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
because he ain ' t doin ' no more. This brother asks a lot of
himself. And about whether when he was a kid, this and that and
this and that. Like I say, I ' ve heard him talk about his
childhood , his marriage , his mamma , all that stuff, listening to
the sermon and lecture and responses .
that from. But it is mystical to me.
I can ' t see where he gets
That's for better and for
worse . Being driven is all right as long as everybody else is
being driven too. You can see where you are headed. It does not
necessarily mean that you can't look and see how other folks are
taking things. That ' s something he had not developed as a young
man. The fact that he could get away with a lot of stuff in
terms of the way he relates to people . That ' s no good for him.
It took him a long time to realize he didn ' t have to win an
argument some time to get his point across. He would just say
what he had to say. Most folks who are with him gonna do it
anyway. He feels like he has to do things in argumentative
fashion. You got to make an order as opposed to a suggestion.
When in point of fact anybody who deals with him knows that
whatever he says is exactly the way he wants it. Nobody takes
his plans and adds to them or subtracts from them. It ' s just
whether or not this is something he is going to deal with . You
always know where he ' s corning from. That does not work to his
advantage sometimes. Because I've seen folks comment and abuse
him on that basis. I really feel for him in that case . Because
his friends almost always , I concern myself with "What is their
78
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
purpose here? Are they trying to be a part of his glory or are
they trying to take something from him or whatever?" Usually I
was not privy enough to know for sure but in a lot of instances I
could see he, -- one brother would be at a lot of meetings and
all. Suddenly he ain't there no more. Another brother comes by
the house. Now he ain't there no more. Very few people have
gone all the way through this thing on both sides. You know, the
church thing and the Civil Rights thing, and then the personal,
and then all the way straight through with him. That shows you
how important his family is. Even though it is better out there
in the country and they go their different places, they always
supported him. Not when they was at the meetings every week but
people come home and not have to go through a lot of verbage and
all that garbage. Our church, like I say, he had just about total
support there. With whatever mess he and my mother might have
had, he always had her in his corner. It was about arguments
that you might have on a personal basis. But when you leave,
you're together. When you look down the road, you're together.
Like the decision to corne up North, he bent for that. He really
wanted to stay there. He just needed for her to be in it, for us
to be loud about staying. None of that happened. Nobody said
anything. Because whenever the two of them were around there was
an unusual situation. Like I said before it was not usual to
have both of them there in any case and at any time. So that was
sort of strange.
79
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR. 1/13/89
ANDREW M. MANIS: Just one more question. Did you ever see your
father depressed or down.
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: Hell, yes. Oftentimes. Like I say, the
point is, when this brother is depressed, he ain't like me. When
I 'm depressed, I stop and just let things go for a minute. When
he's depressed, he might say and he might just sit there looking
like this. But you got to do what you got to do . That is where
the point of admiration comes in from me. Like I say, you say
"The hell with it. " This guy always tries to live up to what he
is saying. He makes a l ot of mistakes, once again but you have
got to admire a brother who ' s got that drive to get things done.
Because not only his personal thing is going at that moment.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Can you name some points, events, that led him
to be depressed?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH: No , I couldn't do that but I am just saying
this is in retrospect. I always thought he had a headache but
now I can see -- we had a problem in church once where -- I heard
him talk about this afterwards. But when I saw it at the time he
just looked strange to me. One of his deacons had a son who was
doing something. Everybody knew about it but myoId man . When
myoId man found out about it, he told the man "You know, that
really ain't cool." The boy didn't mind the comment but the
boy's daddy did. It got to the point where the boy's daddy , who
was a very influential person in the community and the church .
He wanted his son to be just like him and he wasn't going to take
80
FRED L. SHUTTLESWORTH, JR . 1/13/89
some new preacher -- this was early when we got to Birmingham .
He wasn ' t going to take this preacher bugging his son about
anything . His son was above reproach, as I was to my mother.
ANDREW M. MANIS; This was in Birmingham?
MR. SHUTTLESWORTH : Right, in Bethel [Baptist Church}. And some
way or another in the church service , this brother made a comment
to myoId man in the pulpit. MyoId man said "Now we ain ' t gonna
have this . " I didn't understand what the problem was. As far as
I can see, this guy don't like the preaching and the comments my
old man makes. Now, I can see in that time, that period of time,
his bewilderment in his face, why was this guy, who was supposed
to be on his side and one of his deacons doing this. He was
doing the right thing. He knew he was doing the right thing. He
was concerned about why this brother was going through all these
changes. As I got older I realized there was a lot more to it
than that. It had to do with this guy's personal life. I saw
him worrying about the situation with Deacon Davis at Bethel. I
don't know what the situation exactly was but it had to do with
Deacon Davis and his son. When they named that street for him,
Davis was younger, was on the program. He is on the County
Commission right now and he talks about myoId man like he was
the second corning? His old man has passed I think . I'm not
sure. But for a while the relationship was real cool with the
deacon . Everybody loves everybody but the Davises don '